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L 


“WHY CAN’T WE LIVE IN ONE OF THOSE TENTS?” 


IhhI 


A LITTLE PRINCESS 



OF 

TONOPAH 


(by 

A1LEEN CLEVELAND HIGGINS 

*» 



Illustrated by Ada C Williamson 

S> 

l 

• 5 ) p 

* 

THE PENN PUBLISHING 
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA 
MCMIX 




V 


COPYRIGHT 
19 09 BY 
THE PENN 
PUBLISHING 
COMPANY 




Cl. A 244610 

AUi 9 1909 


Introduction 


V 

This book has for its setting a modern 
mining camp of Nevada, where the little 
motherless heroine goes from a middle west 
village with her father and begins her adven- 
tures. She becomes a great favorite in the 
mining town, where she is known as “ The 
Little Princess of Tonopah.” She finds her 
new home full of color, variety, charm and 
fun. She finds, too, that sorrow jogs very 
close to the elbow of joy and it becomes her 
heart’s desire to be “ an angel of service.” 
Her father does not find a quick path to 
wealth, but the Little Princess is as buoyant 
through their trying experiences as at the end 
when Father Dick finally “ strikes his ledge.” 

The new friends she makes through this 
book may be interested to follow her further 
experiences in “ A Little Princess of the 
Pines.” 


3 


4 


CONTENTS 


I. 

Jean’s Decision 

• 

• 

• 

9 

II. 

w Good-Bye, Good-Bye, 

TO 

Every- 



THING ” 




24 

III. 

First Days 




37 

IV. 

Making Friends 




61 

V. 

The Runaway Road 




92 

VI. 

The Cactus Wizards 




125 

VII. 

Ginger’s Adventures 




108 

VIII. 

A Prospecting Trip . 




i 37 

IX. 

The Desert Guard . 




i 54 

X. 

Settling Down 




165 

XI. 

The Chinese Idol 




1 79 

XII. 

A Pedometer Club . 




190 

XIII. 

School 




I 97 

XIV. 

An Angel of Service 




210 

XV. 

The Game’s the Thing 




231 

XVI. 

Jean’s New Interest 




243 

XVII. 

The Benefit Concert 




254 

XVIII. 

A Rejected Gift 




272 

XIX. 

Another Decision 




282 

XX. 

A Dangerous Adventure 




292 

XXL 

The Literary Lady 




3°7 

XXII. 

The Wish Comes True 




316 


S 




Illustrations 


PAGE 

“ Why Can’t We Live in One of These Tents ? ” 

Frontispiece 

He Lifted Her and Held Her 99 

“ Oh, I Knew You Both Would Come Back ” . 188 

“ What is the Matter Now ? ” 205 

“ Here — Isn’t This Your Ball ? ” 237 

“ It’s Just as Good as a Circus ” 264 

At the Entrance They Stopped Short . . . 301 


A Little Princess of Tonopah 


7 




































A Little Princess of Tonopah 


CHAPTER I 

jean’s decision 

Jean lay wide awake in her little low bed, 
turning the grass ring which Grace Collins 
had braided for her that day, — their last day 
together, over where the early wild asters and 
goldenrod made the tall grass of their play 
retreat glow with color. 

Out in the next room, through the crack in 
the door, she could hear voices. It was her 

' 4 

father talking to his two spinster-cousins who 
had come to live with them since her mother 
died six years before. His voice was very 
emphatic. 

“ Jean has decided, her trunk is packed, 
and we are all ready to go, so I don’t see any 

use of arguing any more about it. You agreed 

9 


io A Little Princess of Tonopah 

that if the child wanted to go with me, she 
should go ” 

“ But, Richard,” broke in Cousin Elizabeth 
Doane, “ we didn’t for one minute suppose 
that the child would choose to go.” 

“ Not go with her own father ? ” 

“ Not that, Richard — we only thought that 
she would choose to stay here, as a matter of 
course, with all her playmates — and she loves 
her home so much, — her flowers and Muff and 
Jep — it didn’t seem natural that she would 
choose to leave them for a desolate mining 
country.” 

“ Do you remember how Jean used to run 
away and try to find out what was beyond 
the sky-line?” asked Cousin Rachel signifi- 
cantly of her sister. 

“ Bless the child, yes. She always insisted 
that there was something waiting there just 
for her,” answered Cousin Elizabeth. 

“ The child still has that explorer’s spirit — 
that spirit of adventure. That is what made 
her decide to go,” Cousin Rachel went on. 


11 


Jean’s Decision 

“ You don’t seem to wish to admit that 
perhaps she chose to go because she wanted to 
go with me/’ Jean’s father said in a tone 
which made Jean sit up in bed. 

There was a silence — she could hear the 
click, click of Cousin Elizabeth’s needles. 
Jean bounded out of bed and ran into the 
room, straight into her father’s arms. 

“ Father Dick, I am going because I’d 
rather be with you than any one else in the 
world,” she cried. 

Her father gave a boyish cry of delight, and 
between the kisses which he showered upon 
her, he looked triumphantly at his cousins. 
Cousin Elizabeth took off her glasses and 
rubbed them energetically, as she always did 
when she was worsted. With a little pucker 
in her forehead, Cousin Rachel “ tidied ” her 
work-basket industriously. 

“ Now have you anything more to say ? ” 
he asked. 

Cousin Elizabeth spoke first. 

“ I say this, Richard Kingsley — it is not 


12 


A Little Princess of Tonopali 

right for you to take the child even if she 

wants to go. A child of twelve isn’t capable 

of deciding for herself. Think of taking a 

wee bit girl like her out to such a place as 

those Nevada mining camps. What will you 

do with her ? It isn’t too late to change your 

mind. We can easily unpack her trunk. 

Think of the danger to her health — not to 

speak of her mind and morals ! ” 

“ Nonsense ! ” exclaimed Richard Kingsley 

light-heartedly ; “ she will get along all right. 

I can take good care of her. You aren’t 

afraid, are you, Jean, little comrade?” 

Jean just put both her arms around his 

neck and hugged him with all her might. 

“ No, no,” she cried, “ I want to go.” 

Then almost fiercely she added, clinging more 
* 

tightly to him, “ I wouldn’t stay here without 
you. I want to go and be a pioneer.” 

Cousin Rachel looked at her wistfully. 

“ Child, do you know that there are no 
trees where you are going ? What will you 
do without your trees ? ” 


l 3 


Jean’s Decision 

Jean loved her trees like human beings. 
Their yard, and indeed the whole town of 
Payneville, was filled with beautiful, lovable 
trees. They were not cut and trimmed and 
set just so, like the martial array in the city 
parks — the trees in Payneville were left just 
to grow. Sometimes they grew out of line and 
got in the way of corners, but they were never 
cut down. The “ Town board ” treated them 
indulgently like favorite children. Strangers 
said that the town was made too dark by so 
many trees, but Jean loved their shadow, 
which was never gloom to her. Cousin 
Rachel touched a tender spot when she spoke 
of the trees. 

Jean gave her father an inquiring glance. 

“ There are 1 Joshua ’ trees,” he said. 
“ They are worth getting acquainted with. 
You will not miss your trees, for you will 
have the mountains.” 

“ Humph ! Mountains ! ” ejaculated Cousin 
Elizabeth. “ Mountains all covered with sage- 


brush.” 


14 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ Elizabeth/’ exclaimed Jean’s father some- 
what impatiently, “ why are you determined 
to talk against our new home? You know to 
many people almost any place would be better 
than Payneville. I don’t see how you can 
stand it here yourself — in a place tucked away 
in this valley, forgotten by the world, and for- 
getful in turn of any universe except its own.” 

“ A very homelike universe it is, Richard, 
cradled in by the hills. I think it is just 
nice,” returned Cousin Elizabeth. 

“ So it is,” enjoined Cousin Rachel, sticking 
the pins in the pincushion so that they made 
the figure of a star. 

The hills which met the horizon so quickly 
and gave such a sense of home nearness to his 
cousins had a very different effect upon 
Richard Kingsley. 

“ The littleness of it smothers me,” he 
cried, finding it hard to be tolerant of his 
cousins’ ideals and ideas. “ I hate it — there 
is nothing modern about the place.” 

“ Em glad there’s not — no street-cars, no 


l 5 


Jean’s Decision 

coal-dust, no monopolies, no saloons, no bill- 
boards, no flats — I’m sure we are better off 
without them. We have the papers — that's 
enough for me. You’ll find, Richard, that 
it’s a lot more fun looking through a peek- 
hole at a circus than being in one yourself. 
Why you want to sell the store that your 
father left you and go out to that rough 
country is more than I can understand.” 
Cousin Elizabeth jabbed her needles express- 
ively. 

» 

Jean lay very still in her father’s arms and 
listened. She was very glad that they had 
stopped talking about her. 

“ Rather — why should I want to stay, 
Elizabeth, and keep a store that was handed 
down to me mortgaged for more than it was 
worth ? I could make nothing. I could just 
about pay off the mortgage with my profits, 
if I lived to be sixty years old. What is that 
to wake up to every morning? Why, I 
couldn’t even send Jean off to school when 
she gets old enough.” 


16 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Jean’s heart thrilled — that was one of her 
unspoken dreams. This was the first time 
she had ever heard her father mention it. 

“ But when you give up the store you have 
nothing in the world left but this little 
home,” shrilled Cousin Rachel in a half 
panic-stricken voice. 

“ I have health, and common sense — and 
then — there’s my share of luck.” 

They saw in his eyes the same expression 
which Jean used to have when she ran away 
to the sky-line. 

Cousin Elizabeth sighed and Cousin Rachel 
shook her head. 

“ No, no,” he went on impetuously, “ some 
one else can supply ‘ Tuck ’ Mason with big 
enough shirts, Miss * Manda ’ Perkins with 
her after dinner mints, < Grandpa ’ Aiken 
with his favorite cereal, and Mrs. James 
with dress patterns which are 1 different.’ 
Somebody else is welcome to it all. I am 
glad — glad to get away from it. Yes, we 
must go — Jean and I — we must go.” 


17 


Jean’s Decision 

“ I don’t see how you can make up your 
mind to leave a place that’s always been your 
home. It was that college life that gave you 
all this unrest — all these notions of getting 
out into the world. This place is good 
enough for any one. This house, too, Richard, 
how can you leave it — your birthplace, your 
home ? ” commented Cousin Elizabeth bitterly. 

Jean’s home, small like most of the other 
houses in Payneville, was a red brick with a 
narrow veranda. It had an unpainted 
picket fence, overrun with trumpet-vine. A 
geometrical network of paths worn by genera- 
tions of neighbors went out from the gate, 
connecting it with all the cottages around. 

“ And the garden,” broke in Cousin 
Rachel. 

Jean’s arms tightened about her father’s 
neck and he understood. The garden was 
hardest of all for Jean to leave. It was a 
generous garden, full of lad’s-love, verbenas, 
mignonette, hollyhocks, marjoram, roses and 
all companionable flowers scattered among the 


18 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

vegetables and fruit. The things from their 
garden always took prizes at the “ Illinois 
Valley Fair,” the yearly carnival of Payne- 
ville and all the country round, — three days 
of red balloons, horse-races, side-shows, acro- 
bats and endless exhibits of the country’s prod- 
ucts. Certainly the gods never tasted sweets 
more delicious than the fruits and vegetables 
from “ the Kingsley garden.” Everything 
that grew in it was imbued with the sweet of 
the wholesome, naturally drained earth. 
Their peaches and apples took on a delicate 
glow, bestowed as a special gift, as Jean be- 
lieved, by the mellowing sun which seemed 
to shine just for Payneville. Every year 
their pantry was filled from the garden with 
amber jellies, spiced syrups and sweet con- 
serves. Jean had a little patch of ground for 
herself, and there she spent most of her time 
in summer. If she could only take the 
garden with her. 

“ We can have a cactus-garden,” laughed 
her father. “ And as for leaving this little 


Jean’s Decision 19 

playhouse — I’m not at all sentimental about 
it, since I am going to take my home with 
me. My home is in Jean’s eyes.” 

He kissed her very softly on the eyelids 
which hid the sudden rush of tears over the 
mention of the garden. 

Cousin Rachel cleared her throat. The old 
clock began to strike laboriously. 

“ Why-ee ! ” exclaimed Cousin Elizabeth. 
“ You ought to have been in bed and asleep 
an hour ago, Jean — it’s ten o’clock.” 

“ Do you really know what time it is?” 
laughed Richard Kingsley. “ Does any one 
in Payneville know ? ” 

» 

Payneville people set their clocks by the 
Dorsett mill whistle. One day Miller Dorsett 
would set his whistle going on time, but the 
next day he would be perhaps half an hour 
late. So Payneville clocks were far from 
striking in unison. Since every one was 
knowui to have a different time of day, tardi- 
ness was not regarded as a social or even a 
religious sin in Payneville. People who 


20 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

came into church during the middle of the 
sermon had as complacent a sense of duty 
done as those who arrived for the period of 
silent prayer preceding the opening hymn. 
Perhaps because the clocks were so different, 
people were never in a hurry to be on time — 
so, Cousin Elizabeth declared, their time- 
pieces indirectly saved them nervous exhaus- 
tion. Doctor Bennett, who practiced medi- 
cine when he was not out watching birds, 
had never had a case of “ nervous break- 
down. M Any allusion to the changeable old 
clock always ruffled Cousin Elizabeth. 

“ I know that it is time for that child to be 
in bed,” she said crisply. 

“ Father Dick, put me to bed and tuck me 
in,” cried Jean, unashamed before the sur- 
prised glances of Cousin Elizabeth and Cousin 
Rachel at such a request from a twelve-year- 
old girl. 

Her father took her back to bed, and after 
he had snuggled the light covers about her, 
and put her long braids out on the pillows, he 


21 


Jean’s Decision 

sat for a long time on the edge of her bed, 
holding her hand closely in both of his, with- 
out speaking a word. 

The moonbeams wavered about the room 

and fell on the little birch framed picture of 

Jean’s mother above her bed. Jean saw that 
• 

he was looking up at the softly lighted face, 
and as she pressed his hand to her warm 
cheek, her mother’s spirit seemed to brood 
over them and wrap them round in tender- 
ness. 

“ Dear, dear Father Dick,” Jean cried 
drawing his face down on the pillow beside 
hers. 

11 Do you really want to go with me, Jean ? ” 
he whispered. 

“ I could never let you go without me,” 
she answered, with a happy sob at his dear- 
ness to her, which she realized at that moment 
as never before. 

After he had left her she could not go to 
sleep — she felt wider awake than she had ever 
felt before in her life. 


22 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

The moonshine printed queer, moving 
patterns on the wall and the shadows made 
gnome-like shapes in the corners. Outside 
she heard a light patter of feet upon the 
graveled path. She knew that it was Jep, the 
Scotch collie her father had given her. He 
was making his “ night rounds.” The sounds 
of insects shrilled in the close stillness. The 
big cricket who lived under her window 
chirped sleepily. She heard “ Muff,” her 
canary, give a little disturbed cry and she 
pictured him, a soft yellow and black ball, with 
his head tucked under his wing, going to 
sleep, as he always did, in his swing. 

She thought of all the places she called hers 
— The Screech-Owl Inn, where she and Ted 
Neil had sold lemonade out of a big hollow 
log on hot summer afternoons ; the little 
clump of pine trees, which she called her 
Thought Place ; the attic, full of her mother’s 
treasures ; her Dickey-bird Swing under the 
old butternut tree ; the Lady Slipper Brook, 
where she sailed her little flotilla, The Lady 


2 3 


Jean’s Decision 

of the Lake, The Princess Isolde, Craft O’ 
Dreams, and Puck O’ the Sea, and where the 
pink lady’s-slippers and bird’s feet violets 
bloomed first in the spring ; the Haunted Mill, 
whose dripping, moss-covered wheel whispered 
strange water legends ; the Air Castle — the 
little house Father Dick had built for her in 
the big elm. 

She visited them all in fancy and said 
good-bye then to those and all the other 
places which she loved. 

She listened to the katydids in the trellis, 
unwearyingly repeating over and over their 
dialogue of dispute. Some nights she sided 
with the “ Katy didn’t” disputant — and at 
other times the “ Katy did ” one had her 
sympathy. To-night she changed from one 
to the other. She fell asleep wondering if she 
could keep two katydids alive and if they 
would take up too much room. Her father 
had said she could take “only what was 
absolutely necessary,” and her trunk was not 
very big. 


* 


CHAPTER II 

“ GOOD-BYE, GOOD-BYE, TO EVERYTHING ” 

Jean awoke very early. She rubbed her 
eyes and looked in the corner. Yes, there 
was her trunk, all packed and ready for her 
journey. Then it was not a dream — she was 
really going away to-day. 

She could hear Cousin Elizabeth in the 
kitchen and Cousin Rachel sweeping the hall. 
Her father was on the veranda. She dressed 
herself quickly. She had many good-byes to 
say before they went that afternoon. 

Right after breakfast she started out dressed 
in the gray dress which Cousin Elizabeth had 
made for her to travel in. She put her new 
blue coat over her arm — it was too warm to 
wear it, but she wanted Grace to see it. 

She went first to see old Jimmy Trent in 
his toy-shop. He bobbed up to greet her from 

his seat of repose behind the counter. 

24 


“ Good-bye to Everything” 25 

44 1 want to say good-bye/’ Jean said, “ and 
yet I don’t want it to be like a good-bye. I 
want it to be when I go, as if I might come in 
again any minute.” 

“That’s a soldier’s good-bye,” he said. 

He had a package of new silhouettes he 
had cut for her. She was not to open them 
until she was on the train. Jean dimpled 
with pleasure, for Jimmy Trent’s silhouettes 
were wonderful. Most of them were very 
comical, but some of them were like little 
dream-figures cut out with magic scissors. She 
tucked the package away in her pocket, 
then he showed her the new toys from 
Nuremberg, which had been so many months 
coming. 

After a while, she slipped to the door to 
watch a load of hay go by, and then, with a 
wave of her hand and her old blithe “ Good- 
bye, Jimmy Trent,” she was off down the 
street to the blacksmith shop. 

Jo Sanders was shoeing a horse. He would 
have stopped, for Jean’s going away was an 


26 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

important event to him, but she begged him 
to go right on with his work. 

“Just work along as you always do when 
I’m here,” she said. “ I will hold the horse’s 
bridle — and will you please whistle?” 

Jo started up bravely with the oriole’s 
song, stopping now and then to ask Jean 
questions about her journey. Jean patted the 
white star on the horse’s face and listened 
with the little appreciative quirking of her 
eyebrow, which Jo knew so well and looked 
for as he whistled on. 

“ Now, the meadow-lark’s song,” cried Jean. 

Then she joined with him and together they 
filled the little dusty shop with echoes of the 
meadow-lark’s morning notes. Jo had taught 
her all that he knew about bird mimicry. 

That was her farewell to Jo. 

Then she hurried to the shoe-shop, where 
she found Tim Berendes finishing whittling 
an Indian out of soft maple for her. 

“ I will put it with the reindeer and the 
bears,” she said gratefully. 


“ Good-bye to Everything ” 27 

“ I wouldn’t, Jean, I ’low it ain’t safe,” he 
laughed. 

There were many others : the old nurse, 
who had nursed every child in Payneville — 
dear, white-souled Auntie Nan, who pressed 
upon her various little packages of herbs, 
carefully labeled ; the rector, who gave her a 
new prayer-book and had her say a prayer 
with him very solemnly ; Nat Andrews, who 
squeaked out a rollicking farewell tune on 
his violin for her — Jean would have nothing 
sad ; — Popcorn Dan, the hunchback, and all 
her many other playmates. 

She was busy all morning with her good- 
byes. As she walked home, she went past 
what was known as the Big Yellow House. 
This house was the largest in Payneville, and 
the only one with a stone wall around it. 
To Jean, it seemed a huge bonbonneire sort of 

a house which held an endless variety of 

♦ 

sugar-plums. The white lace-like scroll work 
about the porches and windows suggested 
bonbon paper sticking out. About this house 


28 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

hung a mystery, which Payneville people en- 
joyed talking about when fires burned low, 
and roofs housed them cozily on late, long 
evenings. There were but two dwellers in 
the Big Yellow House — Mr. Hulbert, an old 
man who was a half invalid, and Jock, his 
red-haired Scotch servant. Mr. Hulbert had 
come to Payneville years ago. He had had 
his house built quietly and without making 
any acquaintances in the town ; he had lived 
on there year after year in perfect quiet, seem- 
ingly having no connection with the outside 
world. 

Jean always looked as she passed at the up- 
per window, hung with oriental looking 
tapestries, where the old man always sat. 
His yellow, clear-cut face looked like a 
medallion figure against the dull green and 
umber of the hangings. Jean always smiled 
at him and he always smiled back at her, 
with his very dark eyes. Jean thought it 
was quite remarkable that he smiled with his 
eyes and not with his lips. 


“Good-bye to Everything” 29 

He was there to-day. Jean’s steps faltered. 
She wanted to tell him good-bye. He be- 
longed to her “ good-bye list.” He had a 
very real place in her life— -he lived in her 
imagination as the Man of Mystery. She 
ought to tell him she was going away, she 
thought. Naively, she thought of herself as 
having a place in his life as he had in hers. 
She looked up at him and smiled. He leaned 
forward and smiled back, with his deep, deep 
eyes. Jean paused and tore a leaf from her 
little memorandum book which she always 
carried in her pocket. She put the paper 
against the stone wall and wrote very rapidly : 

11 Dear Man of Mystery : 

“ I am going away to-day. Perhaps I’ll 
never come back. I hope you’ll not be 
lonely. I will say a prayer for you every 
night. Good-bye. 

“ Your true friend, 

“ Jean.” 

She put the note on top of the wall and 
looking up again, saw that he was still look- 


30 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

in g at her. She smiled again and nodded her 
head, then sped up the street. Looking back, 
she saw Jock, the servant, come out and take 
the slip of paper into the house. 

She drew a long breath. All her good-byes, 
outside the gate at home, were said. 

She was late to luncheon. Aunt Rachel 
fussed about and every one seemed hurried. 
There was very little time until they must go, 
so Jean had only a few minutes for her fare- 
well to the garden. 

She went about among the flowers, as if she 
had just run out for a frolic as she did a dozen 
times a day. Her “ clown ” four-o’clocks 
were just beginning to open and show their 
red and yellow stripes. She chattered non- 
sense to them and listened for their answers 
as she always did in her make-believe with 
them. She buried her face in the pinks and 
touched her pet white rose caressingly. 
When she came back her father was standing 
in the doorway, where he had been watching 
her. Her cheeks were very red, but her eyes 


u Good-bye to Everything ” 31 

were dry and she smiled bravely at him as he 
came down the path to meet her. 

“ Little soldier ! ” he cried, kissing her 
admiringly. 

This helped her to take “ Muff’s ” good-bye 
peck on her lips and Jep’s hand-shake as if 
she were only going out for an hour or so and 
would see them again soon. 

Jean was just putting on her hat when 
Pouder drove up to the gate. Pouder’s stage 
rattled once a day to the nearest railroad 
town, Griggsville, — six miles away — to take 
passengers and return with mail and express. 
It was the only thing beside their newspapers 
that Payneville people had to probe their 
minds to the memory of an existence outside 
their own town. 

Cousin Elizabeth and Cousin Rachel were 
in tears. They were very tender indeed at 
parting. At the last minute after Jean was 
seated in the stage, Cousin Elizabeth came 
running out with a bottle and a spoon. Jean 
knew the bottle all too well — she had taken 


32 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

its contents many times for the cough Cousin 
Elizabeth was always fancying she was going 
to have. 

“ I heard you clear your throat in the 
night, Jean — here, child, — take a spoonful of 
my cough syrup, so’s to ward it off.” 

Jean laughed and heroically swallowed the 
hated medicine. She was very fond of the 
two mothering spinster-cousins, but they were 
not like Father Dick. Somehow, when she 
was away from them, she seldom thought of 
them. But he was always in her thoughts. 

. . . She turned from the last glimpse of 

their fluttering handkerchiefs and tucked her 
hand in her father’s with a happy little sigh 
of contentment. She felt that she had the 
very dearest father in the world. Nothing 
else mattered so long as she had him. 

This was Jean’s first journey and every 
detail, even of the little stage-trip, was impor- 
tant to her. She watched Pouder interestedly. 
He carelessly threw the mail-bag upon the 
front seat beside him, then he refilled his pipe, 


“Good-bye to Everything” 33 

which he cuddled very affectionately in his 
long brown fingers. After carefully adjusting 
his wooden leg as a prop, he took up the lines 
deliberately and drove away with the air of 
one going off for a leisurely pleasure drive. 

Pouder had large tales to tell about trips in 
the spring, when mud was up to the hubs and 
he got through without a breakdown. Pouder 
demanded notice, and according to a very 
old law of the working of things, he got it. 
He compelled his passengers to talk to him. 
Jean saw that, though her father answered 
him, he was only half listening. He was 
looking ahead at the winding road whitening 
in the afternoon August sun. 

She had never seen her father look so 
young. He might almost have been her 
older brother — he was so buoyant, so alert, so 
boyishly gay. His eyes were so bright and 
shining. His smooth face had lost the little 
worried crisscross of wrinkles across his fore- 
head. His lips wore his rare, happy “ boy- 
smile ” which Jean loved so much. She 


34 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

could not help stealing glances at him all the 
while. He was the same Father Dick plus 
something altogether new and delightful. 

Jean kept a close watch upon her precious 
trunk, strapped on the back. 

“ Do you suppose I have everything, Father 
Dick? ” she asked, after one of her backward 
glances. 

“ Did you remember your needle and 
thread ? ” asked her father, thinking of the 
possibility of lost buttons and rents in her 
dresses. 

“ Oh, yes, Cousin Martha made me a little 
1 housewife 9 with everything in it to sew 
with. It has all colors of thread in it — some 
that is pink.” 

“ What books did you decide to bring?” 
questioned her father. He had limited the 
number to four, and it had almost distracted 
Jean to have to make a choice. 

“ The Jungle Book, Alice in Wonderland, 
Child’s Garden of Verses and Pilgrim’s Prog- 
ress,” said Jean, with never a word about 


“ Good-bye to Everything ” 35 

the precious ones she had had to leave 
behind. 

“ You have made a good choice, Jean.” 
Her father laughed. 

“ I have pressed flowers in each book — 
Father Dick, we are going through the 
covered bridge I ” 

Slowly, very slowly the stage creaked its 
way through the red covered bridge, and 
when they drove through the fern-scented 
woods on the other side, Jean felt that she 
was very far away from Payneville. 

Presently the spires of Griggsville steeples 
came into view, and Jean knew that at last 
she was going “ out into the world.” The 
Wabash train was late, and Jean thought that 
she had never spent such a long hour as the 
one in the little station. 

When at last she was seated in the train 
and whirled westward toward the prairies, 
she was too excited to speak. She did not 
even think of the silhouettes nor of the letters 
she had to read. She could only lean back 


36 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

and yield herself to the exciting throb, throb 
of motion, and listen to the sound of the 
wheels, which sounded to her to be saying, 
“ Farther — farther — farther away.” 


CHAPTER III 


FIEST DAYS 

The days of the long trip were bewilder- 
ingly exciting to Jean. Such a panorama to 
look at out of the window ! How could any 
one tire of it ? There were stretches of prairie, 
which were so limitless that they made her 
draw a big breath. Then came rolling hills 
that reminded her of Payneville. Sometimes 
they went through cities where sky-scrapers 
were silhouetted against the sky. There 
were strange kinds of buildings — one, which 
her father said was “ mediaeval Gothic.” 
When she saw the Rocky Mountains she 
clapped her hands in delight. It was wonder- 
ful that the world could be so big and so 
beautiful ! 

At Reno, they took their train to go down 
into Nevada. 

“ Now, little comrade, you must keep your 

37 


38 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

eyes open — this country is going to be your 
home,” said Mr. Kingsley as they rode along 
into the desert country. 

A haze of blue-gray lay over the landscape. 
To Jean it looked like a fairy veil. 

“Oh, Father Dick, it is like a picture- 
book ! ” she cried. 

Her father was delighted that she was 
pleased — that she saw none of the barrenness 
and desolateness which almost every one else 
in the car was talking about. 

Jean listened eagerly while he told her the 
story of the mining towns Tonopah and 
Goldfield, to which they were going. 

“ Only a few years ago,” he said, “ a man 
named Jim Butler looked long and often 
from the little worn-out mining town of Bel- 
mont in Nevada to the mountains lying south. 
Every day their blue stretches rose alluringly 
— -just like those you see off there in the glare 
of the sun — and every night they faded from 
his sight wrapped all about in a veil of gray 
which made them look full of mystery.” 


First Days 39 

“ Oh, I’m sure I’m going to love those 
mountains,” sighed Jean. 

“ I believe you will ; so did Jim, in his way. 
The stars above the mountains seemed to 
signal and beckon to him as they sent twin- 
kling gleams across the desert — and at last the 
day came when he answered their call. He 
had in him something of the true explorer’s 
spirit. That was what made him respond so 
eagerly to the untried — the call to a land he 
knew nothing about. He didn’t think about 
the danger or the chance that he might fail. 

“ He packed his prospecting outfit upon his 
little patient burros, which do so much work 
in this country in place of horses, because 
they can stand more exposure and work 
longer at a time. He toiled across the bare 
Manhattan mountains for many, many days — 
then he finally made camp at the spring 
which the Shoshone Indians have gratefully 
named in legend as the one cupped there by 
the Great Spirit that man might live in that 
land and learn of the desert. 


40 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ It was here that Jim Butler found the 
croppings of ore which were the markings of 
the great treasures which those gray, barren 
looking mountains had pocketed in their 
depths. Then he went on to a camp called 
Keystone, several miles farther, where he 
tried to get his ore samples tested or assayed, 
to find out how much they were worth. But 
no one would help him to do this. He didn’t t 
have the money to get it done himself — and 
so he had to depend upon some one else to 
help him out. Every one who looked at the 
ore laughed at it. They all told him that he 
had loaded his burros down with worthless 
rock. He was very, very tired — and it seemed 
to him they were all very cruel to make a jest 
of his faith in the ore he had worked so hard 
to get. 

“ When he started off on his return journey, 
one man waved his hand toward the long 
path Jim Butler had to retrace to get back 
home to Belmont — and called out mockingly 
after him, 1 You’ve broken a fool’s trail.’ 


4 1 


First Days 

But Jim Butler prodded his burros into line 
and went on without a word. He kept all of 
his ore samples, though every one advised him 
to throw them away, and so make the journey 
back easier. He held stubborn faith in his 
samples, for he had fingered those pieces of 
ore too hopefully when he discovered them to 
believe that they were ‘ of no value.’ ” 

Jean listened eagerly as her father went 
on to tell her the outcome of Jim Butler’s 
quest. 

“ Even when Jim Butler reached Belmont 
again, it was difficult to get any one to take 
any but an indifferent look at his ore. It 
was a long time before he could get it assayed^ 
and the certificates of the assaying, which told 
the value of the ore, did not reach him for two 
months. His dreams of gold were pushed 
somewhat into the background and his en- 
thusiasm cooled by the long wait — the pass- 
ing of day after day without news of the 
result. He went to Monitor Valley, where he 
was harvesting his hay when the news reached 


42 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

him that his first eight samples had shown 
values from one to six hundred dollars a ton, 
which meant that his ore was very, very far 
from being worthless. It meant that he would 
be a rich man — he had only to go back and 
mine the gold. All the places from which he 
had taken the gold were his by right of dis- 
covery. From those places big mines would 
develop. There, alone in the harvest-field, he 
knew the half sacred joy of one who, blindly 
believing, knows at last that his faith is 
good. 

“ He went back with two companions to 
the treasure site and with no charm to keep 
away danger except his pluck, he began work 
upon a small ledge of what is now one of the 
largest mines in all Nevada. 

“ That was the man who started these camps, 
Jean, and if he wasn’t afraid, we oughtn’t 
to be, ought we?” said her father, as he fin- 
ished his story. 

“ Afraid ? ” Jean’s hazel e}^es were full of 
wonder. 


First Days 



“ Bless your heart,” cried Father Dick. 
“ You are right — there is nothing to be afraid 



Jean’s first day in Tonopah was unforget- 
able. They arrived in the afternoon. The 
wind was just west of south. The town lay 
throbbing under the glare of the September 
sun, which shone from a sky wonderfully blue. 
The white clouds lying motionless added to 
the dazzle of sun and sky. The varying 
purplish blue of the mountains, which Jean 
could see all about her, delighted and rested 
her eyes, which could not help blinking at all 
the brightness. Out on the desert she could 
see white stretches of incrusted alkali, which 
looked like silver shallows of water in ripple. 
The gray dust was caught up at intervals and 
whirled like smoke clouds from mountain to 
mountain. Despite the heat, a restless activity 
was going on everywhere. 

Darkness came down very quickly. The 
sun gave out its brilliance in a brief, glorious 


44 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

purple sunset. The mountains lost their 
sharp silhouette and took on a gray dusk- 
haze. An invigorating coolness freshened 
the air. Jean felt all “ the tired,” which had 
come from so much sightseeing, leave her. 
She wanted to go out of the hotel again “ to 
look,” so her father took her. 

Down in the town people were out for 
recreation. Music from the gambling houses 
and saloons sounded an invitation upon the 
clear air for those who were unwise enough 
to give heed to it. Men and women on horse- 
back rode to the ridge, or cantered leisurely 
through the streets. At the town hall there 
was an entertainment — an amateur minstrel 
show given as a library benefit. There was 
much to see. 

As they walked back early to the hotel, 
Jean overheard a tired looking man, obviously 
an Easterner, say to his companion, “ Well, 
I don’t see what there is in this place for 
people to go so crazy over — I don’t see a thing 
in it.” 


First Days 45 

Jean looked at him amazed. For what had 
he eyes ? Why, it was a wonder-world ! It 
made her blood tingle and her feet want to 
dance. It was glorious to be there — to be a 
part of it ! 

“ I just love it, Father Dick," she said en- 
thusiastically. “ Don't you ? Aren't you 
glad we came ? " 

“ Yes, Jean — I am glad," answered her 
father. There was something sober in his 
voice which made Jean look up at him 
quickly. She saw that the “ boy-smile " was 
gone and yet Jean knew that his gladness was 
very real. 

The next morning the sun had been shining 
a long time when Jean awoke. At breakfast, 
Father Dick said that they must look about 
right away for their home. 

“ It costs too much for us to live here, Jean. 
You know I haven't anything to work at yet, 
and we must be careful of what little money 
we have." 

“ I think a smaller place would be nicer 


46 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

anyway ; I don’t feel like a pioneer here in 
this hotel,” responded Jean. 

Together they went to look about for fur- 
nished rooms. At every place Jean saw the 
little worried lines come into her father’s fore- 
head. Tonopah prices were very different 
from those of Payneville. They were walk- 
ing along very quietly, when suddenly an 
idea popped into Jean’s head. 

“ Father Dick, why can’t we live in one of 
those dear little tents we see all about ? ” 

“ Jean, you are my inspiration ! ” he cried 
picking her up right there and kissing her. 
“ I believe we can — at least for a while, for 
they say the weather is fine here in the fall. 
Living in a tent will be good sport.” 

They found a little two-roomed tent, all 
fitted for use, up on the ridge. It was not 
like any tent Jean had ever seen before. It 
had a floor and a little stove in it, with the 
stovepipe going up through the top of the tent, 
just as if it were a roof. Then they went in 
by a canvas-covered door instead of drawing 


47 


First Days 

back a flap of the tent as Jean had always 
seen people do. There were cots to sleep on 
instead of beds. 

Jean was delighted with their new home. 

“ I’ve always wanted to live in a tent, 
Father Dick — and to think it has come true ! 
And now we are really pioneers.” 

“ You make a brave little pioneer, Jean,” 
said her father, smiling happily as he helped 
her make a frieze out of her Jimmy Trent 
silhouettes to put over the door. 

Jean put a few pictures about, and laid her 
three books on the pine table. With a few 
touches here and there, the place began to as- 
sume an air of ownership. 

“ Now it seems as if it belongs,” said Jean, 
as she glanced around proudly. 

Jean could hardly go to sleep at night and 
stop looking at the lights down in the town 
and the stars which seemed so close, so bril- 
liant. She thought that she had never seen 
so many stars. She wondered where the ex- 
tra ones came from, and marveled greatly 


48 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

when Mr. Kingsley told her that they had 
been in the sky over Pay neville just the same, 
only she couldn’t see them all, because the 
air was different here. “ It’s several thousand 
feet above the level of the sea in Tonopah,” 
he said. 

“ It’s beautiful to be high up,” said Jean. 
“ It feels nearer mother.” 

Her father loved to have her speak of her 
mother. Cousin Elizabeth and Cousin Rachel 
had always been somewhat shocked at the 
way in which he and Jean talked of her 
mother. Jean would ask the most inconse- 
quential questions about her and speak of her 
lovingly in their gayest moments. There was 
no hushed tone, no dreamy sadness when 
they spoke her name. They were always tell- 
ing over some of her mother’s jokes or laugh- 
ing over some whimsical fancy of hers. Jean 
noticed that now her father spoke and talked 
to her pretty picture more than usual. 

“ Mother would like your neatness,” he 
said as every day Jean industriously dusted 


First Days 49 

their few belongings and set the camp-chairs 
precisely in place. 

“ It’s so easy to keep house like this,” Jean 
exclaimed. “ Why, there isn’t anything at 
all to do. I should think tired folks would 
all live in tents. You know when I used to 
dust in Payneville it took me such a long, 
long time — I didn’t like it one bit. There 
were all the things on the mantelpiece, — all 
those vases that were too little to hold flowers 
and so hard to dust in the crinkly places, — 
and the shell-box with the lid almost off, 
which I was so afraid I’d break. Then the 
chairs all had tidies or head-rests on, which 
made them ever so much harder to dust than 
these camp-chairs. I like it better in our tent- 
house because we haven’t a thing we don’t 
need — and isn’t it queer how few things we 
really do need ? I think people make their 
houses too much work.” 

“ You make a good plea for simple living,” 
answered her father. “ I’m glad you don’t 
miss the crowded rooms.” 


50 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ I think it’s nicer to have just a few things 
— with plenty of room in between. I can fill 
in all the empty places with pretty things I 
imagine — especially the pictures — and every 
day I can make different pictures. This is 
the easiest, nicest way to keep house there is.” 

“ You’ve never tried a palace,” suggested 
her father. 

“ I don’t want to try it so long as I can live 
in a tent-house.” 

Jean delighted to surprise her father with 
frequent changes in the arrangement of the fur- 
nishings, and she gave a certain touch of cozi- 
ness to the two little tent-rooms which showed 
that she had the true home-making instinct. 

Jean was eager to get “some pans and 
things ” and try to cook, but her father said 
that it would never do. They ate their meals 
at a little restaurant called “ Charlie’s Inn.” 

“ Charlie ” was a Japanese boy whose real 
name was Jiro Imado. He was very clean 
and cooked daintily. Jean was amazed at the 
number of things he could make with rice. 


5i 


First Days 

He had cunning little Japanese dishes, and 
all about the room were hung gay pictures of 
Japan. 

After Jean and her father had become 
habitues of the place, one day Jean found a 
wonderful black and gold screen by their 
little table in the corner. 

She gazed raptly at the gorgeous peacocks 
and dragons, and Jiro flashed a quick smile, 
as his alert eyes caught her appreciation. 

“ Honorable missy like it?” he asked in 
his curious English, which so fascinated Jean. 

“ Oh, I love it ! ” exclaimed Jean. 

Jiro Imado laughed. 

“ American missies all time say word love 
— they work little word to death, like very 
small burro-horse which carry too big pack. 
It much overwork word like fix. Honorable 
missy sit where she look square to screen — I 
go make rapid tea.” 

Each day he got better acquainted with 
Jean and her father, who keenly enjoyed 
Jiro’s original observations upon Tonopah. 


52 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ Tonopah very whizzy town,” he observed 
one morning, as he placed some of his most 
delicious breakfast cakes before them. “ Noth- 
ing stand still here — all time stirry, like 
making bake-cake. Every time sun shine 
nice good-morning some one discovery gold 
chunks or build up new store place. Some 
mens find chunks right off quick, like lunch- 
counter meal, and some wait long long time 
till they take sigh-breaths with pain-screw in 
forehead. All kind mens here. Prayer mens 
that iron out old frazzy religions for peoples 
to make new. Gentlemens with checked 
overclothes and elephant diamonds who work 
in night with cards. Burry mens who stick 
to hammer and pick very close, and dig for 
gold chunks with win look on face. Mens 
that knock over chairs — oh, all kind people 
come to Tonopah to make rich. I make rich 
myself. I laugli-up loud for good feel. I 
earn so big money.” 

Every day Jiro Imado showed Jean some 
little favor. He would bow her out of the shop 


53 


First Days 

and always say when she left, “ To-morrow I 
have one nice surprise that make honorable 
missy exclamate.” This kept Jean in a state of 
eager anticipation — and she was ever eager to 
go to the little inn to find out what was waiting 
there for her. Sometimes it was a new kind 
of tea-wafer with a different flower impression 
on it, or a little cup and saucer she could 
call her own, — or a quaint little idol-image 
for table decoration ; she never knew what 
to expect, for there seemed to be no end to 
Jiro Imado’s ingenious efforts to amuse and 
interest her. 

For many days Jean was too busy to write 
to any one in Payneville. After she had 
written to Cousin Elizabeth and Cousin 
Rachel, she wrote a long letter, full of her im- 
pressions, to Grace Collins. 

“ This place is not like any place you and I 
have ever read or talked about,” she wrote. 
“ It is a lot bigger than Payneville, but what 
do you think? only a few years ago there 
were just some tents here ; now there are all 


54 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

sorts of houses and almost everything else — 
Western Union messenger boys, dancing- 
teachers, ministers, policemen, electric but- 
tons, relief societies, automobiles, shops 
with just candy in them, — and many, many 
other things that are not in Payneville at 
all. 

“ Father Dick says that this is a very 
grown-up mining town now, and that we are 
a different kind of pioneers from those who 
came first, because we came on a train and 
they didn’t, for they came before it was made. 
Jim Butler — the man who found this place 
and made a mine called the Mizpah and 
others — danced a cake-walk up and down the 
railroad ties just as soon as they were put as 
far as Tonopah. It was very hard to send the 
gold they found to kind friends without a 
railroad, so every one was glad when it came. 
Some shouted for joy like Uncle Ed Simpkins 
when his pension finally came. The people 
who got here first got the most gold, like 
Jessie Janes and Helen Curtis, who always 


First Days 55 

came so early and got the most cake at our 
tea-parties. 

“ But the very first people had a hard time. 
They didn’t have enough water to take a 
bath. But even if we didn’t come first and 
can take a bath we are pioneers just the same, 
because we live in a tent. You must always 
think of me as a pioneer, living in a tent. 
We live in a beautiful one with a door. Pio- 
neers do not crawl in under the flaps of their 
tents like pioneers in forty-nine. Father says 
many things in a modern mining camp like 
this would be a revelation to those forty- 
niners. Stories about them seem very queer 
to me now. 

“ The only people who can call this place 
their birthplace are the little children in blue 
jumpers. It is funny to see them looking for 
fairies about sage-brush and mining shafts in- 
stead of in the woods where you and I always 
thought elves and fairies were. All the chil- 
dren have playhouses in the ore-dumps. 

“ I have a pair of high gray laced boots to 


56 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

keep the dust out. There is lots and lots of 
dust. It brushes right off my mohair dress. 

“ I have started a cactus garden — one 
cactus has a thorn shaped like a fish-hook on 
it. I guess you wouldn’t like to have it stick 
you. 

“ I see some of the little girls riding burros, 
which are gray and not very wide-awake look- 
ing animals. They switch their tails at noth- 
ing. Father says after we get settled I 
can have a burro of my own if I will not 
fall off and break my neck. 

“ Every morning when the school bell 
makes you go to school I am straightening up 
our tent-house. I am not going to school for 
a while, father says. 

“ If you could see a Joshua tree it would 
make you laugh. Some of them far off look 
like twisted bent old men and one I saw 
looked like the gorilla in our geography. 

“ I wear your grass ring every day. I turn 
it three times each morning and make my 
wish. It hasn’t come true yet, but I know it 


57 


First Days 

will before the ring wears out, because you 
made it out of grass from Queen Mab’s Wish- 
ing Knoll. My wish is about father. I 
would tell it to you, but if I should tell it, 
it wouldn’t come true. 

“ Do you remember when we looked at a 
picture of a sunset and said how there could 
never be colors like that? Well out here 
when the sun sets there are just such reds and 
yellows and blues as those, mixed with colors 
I have never seen before in the sky. These 
colors come at sunrise too but I don’t often 
see them. 

“ I feel a good deal like a girl in a book. 
Every time a page turns there is something 
different. Every morning when I open the 
door I say I wonder what beautiful new thing 
will happen to me to-day? Something al- 
ways does happen. It is very nice — it 
makes me feel as if I have lived a very long 
time to have so many experiences. I am 
tired of making paragraphs — it is time for one 
now but I’m not going to make any more. 


58 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

There are lots of different kinds of people 
here. I know a little Castilian girl whose 
name is Aurelia Quijada. I don’t think you 
will know how to pronounce it. The ja 
sounds like old Tony Harker calling to his 
dog — only softer. She wears her black hair 
braided round her head and tied with ribbons 
which are always bright. Her skin is like a 
cream colored lily would be if it should get 
considerably tanned. Father says I am get- 
ting as brown as a berry. I hope I will not 
get as brown as an Indian. Father says a 
berry is not so brown as an Indian — I have 
never yet seen a brown berry. The Indians 
don’t wear blankets any more. The Indian 
men wear blue shirts and overalls and the 
women wear bright calico dresses and aprons 
they have worked red figures on. None of 
them wear moccasins. I guess they are too 
old-fashioned for civilized Indians. Yester- 
day we saw an Indian mother feeding her 
very little baby milk out of a bottle and 
father said, ‘ Behold the passing of the primi- 


59 


First Days 

tive red woman.’ They wear pretty beads and 
their hair is very shiny. They all play 
games sitting on the ground — some of them 
play right by a church. If the Methodist 
minister in Payneville owned that church I 
guess they wouldn’t play there any longer 
than you could say Jack Robinson. This 
place doesn’t seem so religious as Payneville. 
But of course pioneers are busy and so much 
church takes time. I don’t know whether the 
people who live in those stone houses on the 
hill are pioneers or not, but we are. How is 
the Man of Mystery in the Big Yellow 
House? If you have time please walk 
around and smile at him, for I guess he is 
lonely. 

“ From your loving pioneer friend, 

“ Jean. 

“ P. S. I have a Mexican hat. 

“ P. S. No. 2. There is a house here made 
of barrels and another of bottles put together 
with plaster. Father says they were made 
when people first came and didn’t have any 


60 A Little Princess of Tonopah . 

building material and necessity was the 
mother of invention. 

“ P. S. No. 3. There is a merry-go-round 
here. It makes me think of the county fair. 
It is queer to see a merry-go-round without 
the rest of the fair. The Indians ride and 
ride till they get very dizzy. They like the 
horses best.” 

Jean let her father read her letter before 
she sent it. He gave it back to her with a 
queer little twinkle in his eyes, and they went 
out to mail it. 

“ Oughtn't we to put five cent stamps on 
our letters? ” queried Jean. “ We seem so far 
away from Payneville.” 


CHAPTER IV 


MAKING FRIENDS 

Jean made friends quickly, and among the 
first were Max Stiiven and his wife Elsa, who 
kept a little baker’s shop. Jean was soon 
lured there by the spicy fragrance of Elsa’s 
cakes and by the speaking notes of Max’s 
violin. They had come from their German 
home to take up their life in the American 
west and had been drawn with others to the 
new mining camps by the wonderful stories of 
possibilities there. Their little shop was 
about the only thing in camp which had not 
changed since they came to it. 

In those first years, Max had gathered about 

him three other music lovers, hunchbacked 

“ Chuck ” Willard, whose violin whispered 

mystic wonders, — “ Major ” Beebe, one time 

fop and fine-mannered gentleman, whose 

61 


62 A Little Princess of Tonopah. 

’cello sounded caressing echoes of his gold- 
lace days, so ruthlessly stripped from him, — 
and Helmer Scaaden, whose viola had not lost 
in the new land its eerie note of strong Viking 
melody. Almost every night the four of them 
had played wonderful music in the little shop, 
and soon the place had become crowded with 
listeners drawn to hear the gossamer of their 
fancies, voiced so surpassingly by these musi- 
cians. Other musicians had come to play 
with Max, and he had led them joyously, with 
quick hands and flashing eyes. 

Thus Max’s orchestra had developed. His 
orchestra had become his passion. Now in 
his insistent work for it he lost his home- 
sickness for his native land. He struggled 
amid the clash of rag-time airs and the medley 
of popular music to elevate the musical in- 
terests of the mining town. Very early had 
come to him the growing idea of an orchestra 
to play Wagner’s classical music. For this he 
schooled his men, many of them untutored 
in technic and ignorant of such music. 


Making Friends 63 

There were many discouragements. The 
men were not faithful to practice — because at 
night they wanted their amusements, or 
because, all too quickly for Max’s purpose, 
they became absorbed in the feverish quest for 
gold. Then some of the men were reluctant to 
give up the rollicking rag-time airs which Max 
rigidly forbade ; with these Max always 
worked the hardest — opening up to them the 
wonder-world of his beloved composers. He 
was painstaking with the slowest, and fairly 
glowed over their final interest and apprecia- 
tion. So Max worked on with his orchestra ; 
so patiently and lovingly and masterfully that 
all his men loved him and everywhere was his 
orchestra spoken of as “ Max’s Orchestra.” 
He lavished upon his orchestra a certain 
paternal tenderness which would have gone 
to his and Elsa’s little child, who died before 
they left Germany to try the new land of 
promise. 

There seemed always something to take 
away his men. The population was so fluctuat- 


64 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

in g ; sometimes he got a new man only to lose 
him within a month. Once, during one of 
the camp’s epidemics, six of his men had died. 
Since that time, Max had been one of the 
town’s most active men in securing more 
sanitary regulations. The time when he 
could number enough men for his Wagner 
orchestra seemed slow in coming, but Max 
worked on undaunted. He was always look- 
ing for new men. He was more interested 
than any one else when a man came to try his 
fortune in the camp, and he was never slow 
in finding out whether the newcomer cuddled 
in his belongings a flute, a piccolo, a violin, or 
some instrument he needed for his orchestra. 
Thus it was he found Jean’s father, who had 
his flute tucked away in his trunk, and per- 
suaded him to add its sweetness to Max’s 
orchestra. Jean always said of her father’s 
flute that it sang of “ the wild which can’t be 
caught.” 

To Jean this lovable German couple soon 
became “Tante Elsa” and “Onkel Max.” 


Making Friends 65 

Mr. Kingsley was delighted to have a place 
where he might leave her, as necessity often 
compelled, while he was looking about, 
“ plumbing fortune’s depths,” as he called it. 
So Jean was in and out of the shop many 
times a day. Max’s music bewitched her, and 
Elsa’s cakes gave her another kind of delight 
equally strong. Jean loved to listen to them 
talk to each other in German. She developed 
the liveliest curiosity to know what the words 
meant, and Elsa tried to teach her. Their 
English surprised her, because it was not at 
all like the broken guttural English she had 
heard the German farmers about Payneville 
speak in the streets on Saturdays. 

“ Tante Elsa, you talk almost like father,” 
she remarked one day, between mouthfuls of a 
savory tart. 

“We have said to each other — Max and I 
— that we will learn the language of the new 
land well. We do it as Max does his music— 
the best we know. So must you do the German, 
when you learn it quite,” answered Tante Elsa. 


66 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Jean came out of the shop late one after- 
noon and as she walked up to her tent-home, 
she came upon a fat boy with a messenger’s 
cap on the side of his head, digging his heels 
in a pile of sand. There was something about 
this careless urchin with his very blue eyes, 
his shock of yellow hair and his dusty clothes, 
which interested Jean at once. His hands 
were in his pockets, and between his teeth, 
bobbing upon a long stem, he held a plump, 
luscious raisin. 

Jean attempted a conversational opening. 

“ Why don’t you eat your raisin?” she 
asked. 

The boy looked at her sidewise and kept on 
with his manipulations in the sand. 

“ Perhaps you stole it,” pursued Jean, with 
mischief in her face. 

The very blue eyes narrowed for an instant, 
then opened very wide and the boy laughed. 

a Aw g’wan,” he said, kicking a cloud of 
sand high into the air. “ What’s it to you 
whether I stole it or growed it ? ” 


Making Friends 67 

The tone of his gay challenging voice saved 
his words from impudence and Jean laughed: 

“ Perhaps some one gave it to you,” she 
ventured, lingering. 

“ Aw, now — look at ’im — does he look like 
the kind they gives away ? ” the boy exclaimed 
derisively, holding up the raisin between his 
fingers and feasting his eyes upon the delec- 
table morsel. 

“ It looks very fat and good,” responded 
Jean appreciatively. “ Have you any more ? ” 

“ Yep, a whole stummick full,” answered 
the boy, turning his back suddenly and un- 
ceremoniously, it seemed to Jean, as he gazed 
down the street. Jean started to go, and he 
wheeled about quickly. * 

“ Wait a minute,” he cried, at the same 
time giving a series of high staccato whistles 
in answer to which a boy with some papers 
under his arm turned at the corner and came 
quickly toward them. 

“ Mike, get my friend here some raisins. I 
ain’t got but one left,” he commanded imperi- 


68 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

ously, with a flourish of his hand to indicate 
Jean to the newcomer. 

Mike grinned and hurried away. 

“ Is he your little brother ?” queried Jean, 
looking after the departing figure of Mike 
speeding like the veriest minion to the near-by 
grocery store. 

“ Naw — he’s my subjec’,” answered the boy 
impressively. 

u Your subject ? ” gasped Jean, dazed. 

“ Yep — I’m a king — King Bozzie,” an- 
nounced the boy, striking an imperial attitude 
ludicrously apt. “ I was coronated on Sunday 
night. We have a coronation every week 
and we won’t let no feller be king twict till 
all the subjec’s has had a turn. Every feller 
gets ter be king for a week at a time an’ then 
all the rest are subjec’s and buy him anything 
he wants to eat an’ wait on him an’ mind 
what he says, an’ dassent talk back. They 
give him a good time for a week an’ he gives 
them their orders at the Palace every 
mornin’.” 


Making Friends 69 

“ The Palace? ” questioned Jean in wonder. 

“ Yep, the Palace is jes’ a block around 
the corner in a shed. Oh, it’s great ! ” ex- 
claimed King Bozzie, his eyes brightening 
with enthusiasm as he gave Jean details of 
his grandeur. 

Before he had exhausted his impressive 
supply of adjectives Mike was back and 
handed him a generous handful of raisins. 
King Bozzie dismissed Mike with a curious 
twist of a careless forefinger and then handed 
his offering to Jean. 

“ Thank you very much,” said Jean, gra- 
ciously. 

“ Nawthin’ at all — don’t mention it,” an- 
nounced King Bozzie with a condescension 
befitting royalty. 

Then he came closer and studied Jean 
critically. With a furtive glance over his 
shoulder, he asked impetuously, “ Wouldn’t 
you like to see the Palace ? ” 

“ Oh, I’d love to see it,” cried Jean, clapping 
her hands. 


70 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ Then come along.’’ 

Jean had to take very rapid strides to keep 
up with King Bozzie, who between backward 
glances and labored breaths explained his 
haste. 

“ No one but subjec’s is allowed, an’ I don’t 
want the fellows ter see. You looks like the 
right sort, or you wouldn’t get to see the 
Palace.” 

The Palace was soon reached. King Bozzie 
threw open the door and disclosed the interior 
with great pride. 

There was the throne, ingeniously con- 
structed, step and all, from dry-goods boxes. 
The coronation robe was made from a dis- 
carded flag and the crown and the sceptre 
were hammered out of tin. The royal couch 
was elaborately draped with pink mosquito 
netting. The most important thing in the 
room was the royal cupboard. 

King Bozzie put his plump hand into his 
pocket, and after burrowing about among its 
contents, brought forth a key carefully at- 


7 1 


Making Friends 

tached to a red string. He unlocked the royal 
cupboard, and, waving Jean to a seat on the 
throne, offered her the choice between peanuts 
and pretzels. 

Jean seated herself with proper deference 
upon the throne and took some pretzels. 
King Bozzie took some of each delicacy and, 
seating himself on a box, gave her farther 
information about himself and his subjects. 

“ My real name when I’m not a king is 
Tubby, ” he said. “ Every feller has to be 
called King Bozzie when he’s king because — 
but I couldn’t tell you why, ’less you was a 
subjec’. Tubby is what every one calls me ; 
but I’ve got another name — Robert Wood — 
that’s jes’ used on special ’casions. My father 
cooks in the Mizpah restaurant, an’ I work 
in the telegrap’ office. I get off at five o’clock 
an’ then Skin Hudson comes on in my place. 
Father’s a number one cook. I ain’t got a 
mother.” 

“ Neither have I,” said Jean. 

“ Gee, ain’t you?” cried Tubby, offering 


72 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

her another pretzel. “ You look like you had 
one. When did you come? You’ve not been 
here long, I know, er I’d a seen you. I know 
every one in town.” 

“ We’ve just come,” answered Jean. 

“ Now, if you was jes’ a boy you could be a 
subjec’,” said Tubby regretfully, “ an’ then 
you would get acquainted fast.” 

“ Oh, I’m getting acquainted with lots of 
people every day.” 

“ You have to be careful gettin’ acquainted 
in a place like this,” remarked Tubby sagely. 
“ You can’t pick up with jes’ every one. 
Now if you should ask me I could tell you 
who’s who. You see deliverin’ telegrams is 
very informin’. I get around all over town 
an’ hear about everybody. It’s a good job, 
too — all the fellers tries ter be messenger boys. 
It keeps me jumpin’ ter keep my place. They 
fire a feller fer nothin’ ’cause they know there’s 
some one ’round the corner waitin’ fer the 
job. They thought I’d be slow ’cause I’m so 
fat, but I can beat Skin any time up to Oddie’s 


73 


Making Friends 

house — that house with the biggest porch of 
any house on The Row. Gee, they’re swells 
in The Row. They get telegrams all the time. 
All of the fellers that’s in on this ” — he waved 
his hand about the shed — “ works at some- 
thing ’ceptin’ Tad Griffith. He’s rich and goes 
to school. His father lets us use this shed. We 
wouldn’t a had Tad, only jes’ ’til last month 
he was workin’ like the rest of us — he was a 
soda fountain boy — an’ then his father struck 
it rich. Some old stock he had, that he’d 
forgot about, all of a sudden jumped to the 
clouds.” 

The six o’clock whistles started to blow and 
Jean sprang from her throne. 

“ Father Dick will be waiting for me.” 

“ What’s his other name? ” 

“ Mr. Richard Mountford Kingsley is his 
name. My name’s Jean.” 

“ You oughtn’t to have such a girl name. 
You seem more like er boy than er girl,” said 
Tubby flatteringly. “ Most girls are jes’ 
fiddle-dee-dees. I wish you was er boy, so’s 


74 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

you could be a subjec’. But you can be a 
princess — you look like one, — all but your 
clothes. You ought to have some satin and 
gold lace. Yes, we will call you The Princess 
of Tonopah, ” he said. 

He bade her good-bye reluctantly and said 
that he would bring Skin around the next 
day. Skin, he explained, could do a buck 
and wing dance and could waggle his ears and 
twist himself into a bow-knot on a trapeze. 

Jean was very much excited over her new 
friend Tubby and could talk of nothing else 
to her father that night. 

“ I am a princess now, Father Dick,” she 
cried. 

“ Princess of what? ” laughed Father Dick. 

“ The Princess of Tonopah,” replied Jean 
proudly. “ What could be grander ? ” Then 
she repeated all of Tubby’s remarks just as he 
had made them. 

“ I think his English might be improved,” 
commented Father Dick, much amused when 
she had finished. 


75 


Making Friends 

“ Yes, but it says what he means, Father 
Dick,” said Jean in quick defense of her new 
friend. 

Tubby kept his word and brought his friend 
“ Skin ” Hudson around the next day to see 
Jean. Jean was highly entertained by Skin’s 
personal history. 

“ He’s worse off than you or me — he ain’t 
got a father or a mother either,” Tubby in- 
formed her. “ He’s got a big brother though, 
’n a sister. His brother’s name is Warren, an’ 
he works in one of T. Oddie’s big mines.” 

“ An’ my sister May’s the finest kind of a 
sister,” broke in Skin. “ She’s got more grit 
than any feller I ever saw. She works in 
that dry-goods store on the corner. We all 
came here because we didn’t have no one 
’cept one ’nother an’ no home any place, an’ 
we heard we could get awful rich here in just 
a little while. Sis’ was goin’ to keep house 
for Warren an’ me — that was what she wanted 
more’n anything. But things didn’t go just 
like we expected an’ we ain’t got our home 


76 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

yet. Sis’ has to work too ’cause things cost so 
much an’ Warren an’ me can’t earn enough 
money yet to keep her too. We live jus’ 
most anyway now — but Warren’s spectin’ a 
raise an’ then he says May shan’t work any 
more. He hates awful to have her work, an’ 
so do I, she’s not strong like us fellers. But 
May says she’s goin’ to work anyway — so ’s 
we can save for our home. * If we can just 
have a place we can call home an’ I can keep 
house,’ she says ever’ single day.” 

Jean was duly appreciative of Skin’s acro- 
batic skill and his other interesting qualities, 
and he was soon established with Tubby 
and Cop and other messenger boys as a per- 
manent friend. 

Her father made no opposition to any of 
Jean’s new friendships. He had implicit 
faith in her intuition. He believed that it 
could not lead her to choose the wrong kind 
of friends. He felt that she was perfectly safe 
even among the motley array of inhabitants 
in a mining town. He did not think that, in 


77 


Making Friends 

any environment, Jean would lose any of her 
sweet wholesomeness. He knew that she 
would turn naturally only to those who had 
elements of character which responded to her 
own soundness. 

There was comradeship in her eyes for 
every one and many an older person saw the 
ghost of his vanished child-self in her smile. 
More than one person stopped to talk to her 
as she sat on the tent door-step with one of 
her beloved books in her lap. 

A gentleman in a black coat stopped one 
day as she was reading “ Alice's Adventures in 
Wonderland.” 

“ Is the Walrus still as wise as ever?” he 
asked, glancing at the picture on the page 
where she was reading. So it was that they 
fell into a discussion of Wonderland folk. 

u I guess that you make some kind of a re- 
ligion,” said Jean after a while, when they had 
agreed about all of Alice’s charms and foibles. 

The clergyman laughed and fingered the 
gold cross on his watch-chain. 


78 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ I am Father Ambrose,” he said. “ That is 
my church on the corner — my people hauled 
the lumber for it over three hundred miles in 
the first camp days.” 

“ Oh, the one where the Indians play cards, 
— the one with the cross on top?” cried Jean 
jumping up to look. “ That is the Catholic 
church, Father Dick says.” 

She looked at Father Ambrose with shy 
curiosity. She had never seen a Catholic 
priest — there was no Roman church in Payne- 
ville. 

“ My church has a cross on it too.” She 
pointed to the Episcopal church. “ My 
mother gave me my religion.” 

“ It all depends upon what kind of a relig- 
ious garment we find hanging beside our 
cradles, doesn’t it?” said Father Ambrose, 
smiling. “ After all, one garment fits about 
as well as another, since they’re all handed 
down. We are put into them before we are 
big enough to say whether we like them or 
not — we grow up with them and get ac- 


Making Friends 79 

customed to them — so we seldom change for 
another garment that is strange.” 

“ Tubby didn’t find any religion-clothes at 
all by his cradle. He never goes to church 
and he doesn’t know one word of the cate- 
chism. He says he doesn’t know what a 
catechism is — he says it sounds like a kitten 
sneezing. Do you know him?” 

“Tubby? Oh, yes, every one knows 
Tubby. Tubby may not know any catechism, 
but he has some ideas that are as sound as any 
I know in anv church codes. I’ve come to 
think ” — he put his foot on the step and 
leaned upon his knee, looking earnestly at 
Jean and speaking as grown people sometimes 
speak to children — fearlessly, eagerly, with a 
sort of relief at being able to speak their true 
minds without being misunderstood, “ I’ve 
come to think, since I’ve lived here, that the 
best church in the world is the out-of-doors — 
the desert and the mountains have taught me 
that — they have such big lessons to teach — 
and if my religion means anything at all it is 


80 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

just to serve. I don’t care how or where — 

wherever people need me ” he broke off 

and looked away at the mountains. 

“ That’s what Father Dick says. I guess he 
must have your kind of a religion, though he 
doesn’t call himself anything. Don’t you 
want a drink of water ? We have some 
keeping cool in a nice white canvas bag. 
Isn’t it funny to keep water in a bag and 
isn’t it queer that it doesn’t leak out? ” 

She ran for a cup of water, and Father 
Ambrose drank it gratefully, for the day was 
very warm. 

When Jean’s father came home he found 
them ensconced together upon the step, read- 
ing aloud in turn from her book. 

Jean soon became acquainted with “The 
Rainbow Lady ” on the Hill, who seemed to 
Jean to be the embodiment of the most exqui- 
site ladyhood. She lived on the hill in “ The 
Row,” in a house made of plaster with a low 
red tiled roof and rough-hewn redwood pillars 


8i 


Making Friends 

to the porches. There was an open court at 
the back after the fashion of the Mexican 
houses. 

Her home was very near the tent, so Jean 
often saw her pass. Jean noticed that her 
shoes were always shining and her clothes 
immaculate. She looked somehow very new. 
It was her face which drew and fascinated 
Jean above all else. 

“The Rainbow Lady’s face makes me think 
of pink and white honeysuckles,” she said one 
day after The Rainbow Lady had passed. 

“ Why do you call her The Rainbow Lady ? ” 
questioned her father, left behind, as he oc- 
casionally was, in the flights of Jean’s imagina- 
tion. “ Certainly not from the effect of her 
clothes, for she dresses in very quiet colors.” 

“ Oh, father,” exclaimed Jean at his stupid- 
ity, “ don’t you know ? I call her The Rain- 
bow Lady because she is like the Rainbow 
folk in Rainbowland.” 

“ How do you know what the folk in Rain- 
bowland are like? ” he laughed. 


82 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ I know/' Jean nodded her head wisely. 
“ I know — and they are the beautifullest 
people in the world. They look new like her 
— always as if they’ve just had a bath and all 
around them, like her, they have joy-mist, 
which is all colors and spangly bright. They 
make you think of ring-doves, and dew on a 
pink rosebud in the morning, and fringes of 
starlight on the water, and peacock feathers 
and soap-bubbles in the sun — and the inside 
of sea-shells — and all those things.” 

4 

“ Oh, I understand now,” said her father 
humbly. 

Sometimes The Rainbow Lady rode by on a 
black horse which pirouetted about a great 
deal as if proudly anxious to compel an ex- 
hibition of his fair rider’s horsemanship. 
Once she dropped her crop in the dusty trail 
by the tent and Jean picked it up for her. 
That was the beginning of their acquaintance. 
Jean found that The Rainbow Lady could 
chatter her kind of fun almost as well as her 
father. 


Making Friends 83 

One day she stopped and took Jean up be- 
hind her on the horse and up and down, up 
and down the hills they went, for such a ride 
as Jean had never had before in her life. 
Then when the ride was over, The Rainbow 
Lady took her to her house. They went out 
into the court, where Jean saw more green 
growing things than she had seen since she 
came to Tonopah. She put her face against 
the ferns and smelled them ecstatically. 

The Chinese servant brought out a table 
laden with tea and cakes and little candies. 
Jean watched the shuffle of Sa Churo’s 
sandals curiously and exclaimed in delight* 
over the length of his queue. 

“ It’s as long as the one in my Book of 
Journeys,” she said as she watched Sa Churo 
disappear. 

The Rainbow Lady knew at once what she 
meant, and told her how Sa Churo wore his 
queue sometimes wound about in a knot. 
Then Jean watched her hostess pour the fra- 
grant tea into tiny cups with irises on them. 


84 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Her fingers were very white and slim. As 
The Rainbow Lady's white hands fluttered in 
and out the pretty china and silver, Jean 
thought of lightly poising humming-birds. 

Jean drank her tea and looked gravely 
about. 

“ Everything looks new, just like you," she 
remarked. “ When did you come ? Did 
your father just bring you a little while ago 
and build this house for you ? " 

“ My husband built this house for me and 
brought me here, not my father," said The 
Rainbow Lady smiling. “ I am a bride — that 
is why everything looks so new." 

“ Did you cry when you left the place you 
came from?" asked Jean quickly. 

“ Oh, no ; I’d rather be here — with Hugh, 
my husband, than anywhere else in the 
world." 

“ 1 guess he must be just like my father, 
because that is the way I feel about him too. 
I think we must be kin-folks." 

“ I am sure we are very close kin." The 


Making Friends 85 

Rainbow Lady laughed merrily and kissed 
Jean on each flushed cheek. 

“ Sometimes when you go by the Citizens' 
Bank, Jean, look for a sign next door which 

A 

says Hugh Bronson on it. That is where my 
husband stays when he is not at home. He 
is a lawyer." 

“ I will ask Tubby if he is a nice man." 

The Rainbow Lady laughed again, and took 
her to see all the rooms in her new house. 

“ Oh, I think that a bride's house is the 
very nicest kind of a house," exclaimed Jean 
as they went from room to room. 

There were heavy green hangings inside the 
windows to make it dark and cool ; the rugs 
were like the soft heavy moss in the woods 
and the pictures were like bits from Jean's 
prettiest dream-scenes. There was a piano, 
and The Rainbow Lady sang for Jean — pretty 
lilting melodies from light operas, and quaint 
folk-songs which sounded to Jean like noth- 
ing she had ever heard, yet strangely familiar. 
Then The Rainbow Lady stopped singing and 


86 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

played something that compelled Jean’s feet. 
She slipped from her chair, and with her skirt 
held daintily, she flitted and whirled there 
upon the polished floor in the airiest, dainti- 
est elfin motions. 

“ Bravo ! ” cried The Rainbow Lady clap- 
ping her hands in astonished approval. 
“ Where did you learn to do that ? Who 
taught you ? ” 

“ Nobody taught me — it did itself. It was 

t 

what the music said. It was a wood-elf call- 
ing — and telling about the wild.” 

“ Exactly,” cried The Rainbow Lady de- 
lightedly. 

Then she played again — a gay witching air 
which sent Jean floating down the room'like 
a bit of thistleblow. 

Jean could not believe it when she heard 
the little clock beat out six silvery strokes. 

“ You must come very often for tea with 
me,” said The Rainbow Lady, when Jean said 
good-bye. 

This was the beginning of a series of won- 


Making Friends 87 

derful afternoons at The Rainbow Lady’s 
house. 

One day Jean came home from a short ex- 
cursion very much excited. 

“ Father, I’ve found a little girl that’s 
stolen my dream-name ! ” 

“ Beatrice ? ” 

“ Yes, the one I call myself when I pretend 
I’m some one else — and what do you think ? 
— She is all ruffles and frills and ribbons — I 
don’t like her to have my dream-name, for 
she’s not a bit like it. She lives near The 
Rainbow Lady, in a gray house with green 
shutters. I was playing in the sand-pile with 
Aurelia Quijada and this little girl came up 
and watched us. She wouldn’t play in the 
sand because she was afraid it would spoil her 
clothes. They stood out so stiff — they didn’t 
look a bit at home on her. It was a long time 
before she would speak to us or tell us her 
name. Then she said that her mother didn’t 
allow her to play with strange street children. 


88 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Her hair was all made fuzzy in make-believe 
curls and her eyes were little and green, and 
her legs were skinny, and I thought I just 
couldn’t stand it to let her have the name of 
my make-believe-self. I said, ‘ Beatrice is my 
dream-name, so you can’t have it — it’s mine/ 
and she said, 1 It’s not, it’s mine ; ’ and I said, 
‘ ’Tis not,’ and she said, 1 ’Tis too,’ and I 
wanted to throw sand at her, but I didn’t. I 
went right to The Rainbow Lady’s husband 
and told him about it — the Rainbow Lady 
says that straightening out things is his pro- 
fession — and I thought he could fix it all 
right. But he said that he was afraid she had 
as much right to the name as I had, and prob- 
ably more, because her mother gave it to her 
for keeps and the minister said it over before 
God, when he sprinkled water on her head 
which was christening her and that made it 
sure enough her name. It was just 1 my name 
in fancy,’ Mr. Bronson said — a name that I 
pretend with and belonged only to my dream- 
self — not at all like Jean, which is my every- 


Making Friends 89 

day name. He says there’s nothing to do but 
let her keep it and not dispute about it any 
more — and — and, he even said that I ought to 
’pologize to her for saying it wasn’t hers. 
But I’d rather — I’d rather take Cousin Eliza- 
beth’s cough medicine than do it.” 

Mr. Kingsley chuckled. 

“ What does Tubby say about it? ” 

“ He says it’s the thing to do, to ’pologize, 
and I know without asking you think so too.” 
Jean sat down despondently and began to 
braid and unbraid her hair as she always did 
when her temper was ruffled. 

u 1 The world is so full of a number of things, 

Fm sure we should all be as happy as kings,’ ” 

quoted her father, laughing and catching 
her up. 

This ended Jean’s flurry of temper and she 
walked very soberly over to the gray house 
with the green shutters. She rang the bell, 
which was very hard to find because it 
was a queer dragon-like head instead of an 


90 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

ordinary knocker. Beatrice herself came to 
the door. She carried a marvelous doll 
dressed in brocaded queen’s clothes. 

“ I've come to tell you that I’m sorry I said 
you stole my name. Beatrice is more your 
name than mine, because it’s only mine in 
make-believe and I’m glad I didn’t throw 
sand at you, though I wanted to do it so 
much that my fingers had pins in ’em.” 

Beatrice promptly slammed the door in 
Jean’s face and Jean went back much bruised 
in spirit to her father to question him about 
the etiquette of apologies. 

“ Perhaps she had to have time to think it 
over. Give her time,” said her father. 

The next day Beatrice came to the sand- 
pile, and with a watchful governess in the 
background, sat down and tried to help Jean 
make forts. 

“ She didn’t say a word about my ’pology,” 
Jean said afterward, “ and she didn’t know 
how to make forts at all. But she wanted to 
make up, so I did, and she would really be 


Making Friends 91 

1 

nice if she wasn’t so dressed up. Her dress 
to-day didn’t have so many ruffles, and she 
told me some French words for things. She 
used to live in Chili, in another mining town, 
and I guess I am going to like her, maybe.” 

It came about that before many days Jean 
numbered Beatrice among her “ friends for 
always.” 

“ I’d like her for what she could be, if 
’twasn’t that she is what she is,” Jean ex- 
plained rather incoherently when her father 
expressed surprise at the growing friendliness 
between them. “ She is a spoiled child of 
wealth, Father Dick. She wouldn’t be if she 
could help herself. Her mother makes her 
wear tucks and ruffles. Beatrice is horrid 
inside her nice house, but she is sweet out- 
doors on the sand-pile.” 

Thus it was that Jean’s friends grew apace, 
and every day she looked at each new face 
with eager expectancy , that she might not 
pass by “ an unacquainted friend.” 


CHAPTER V 


THE RUNAWAY ROAD 

One morning Jean overheard her father 
talking to Beatrice’s father, Mr. Paxton, 
outside the tent, and their conversation was 
about something very interesting, because it 
concerned her. 

“ Beatrice is going to California for a month 
with her mother, and if you will let Jean 
ride Beatrice’s pony, while she is gone, we 
will be much obliged to you — the little beast 
must have exercise.” 

Jean was ecstatic — she could ride Trix 
every day ! She waited breathlessly for her 
father’s answer, and when he gave his con- 
sent she set up a little squeal of delight which 
made both men laugh and guess that she had 
been listening. 

Father Dick gave Jean strict orders about 

92 


The Runaway Road 93 

the limits of her rides. Jean was contented 
for a time with her canterings within these 
limits. It was enough just to be on Trix’s 
back and go — go — go, as fast as they could. 
But after a while, the road out to the desert 
lured her irresistibly. The long white road, 
the runaway road, ribboning into the purple 
haze of distance — she could not resist riding 
a little way upon it. She ventured around 
the curve, silencing the little tugging voice of 
her conscience. Once round the curve she 
forgot everything except the road that lay 
before her with its wonderful, boundless 
sweep across the desert. The mountains be- 
yond lay in the shimmering gauze of silvery 
blue. One little vagrant cloud played about 
in the sky. The road — the wonderful, lur- 
ing road — said, “Come — come — come.” Jean 
drew a long breath and gave free rein to Trix. 
The clear air swept her cheeks, her eyes shone 
with excitement, her braids loosened and her 
hair flew about her shoulders. Trix’s little 
feet beat rhythmically upon the hard road and 


94 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Jean rode on farther and farther, around the 
mountains, upon an old untraveled trail and 
out of sight of Tonopah. The runaway spirit 
compelled her and filled her with reckless 
forgetfulness of anything but the joy of the 
hour — the beautiful glowing hour. 

She got off the pony at intervals to chase 
gophers and make the acquaintance of horned 
toads. 

She caught a little lizard #nd held him by 
a tether made from a torn piece of her hair 
ribbon. His bright bead-eyes and his quick 
movements delighted her. She would have 
taken him with her, had he not adroitly 
slipped from his noose and disappeared sud- 
denly under the sage-brush. She found a little 
cactus which had evidently grown just for 
her. She dug it up carefully, and managed 
to mount Trix with it and to carry it so it 
would not stick herself or the pony. 

At last, when the sun suddenly sank be- 
hind the mountains, she looked around. She 
turned slowly with the realization that she 


The Runaway Road 95 

was out of sight of Tonopah — and that she 
did not know how to get back. Which moun- 
tain hid the town? How sphinx-like, how 
awful the mountains suddenly became ! Jean 
circled around uncertainly. Trix put up an 
inquiring head and whinnied questioningly. 
Jean’s eyes blurred as she looked at the 
deepening purple of the mountains, and the 
rapidly shifting colors of the sunset. She was 
lost ! 

She dug her heels into Trix’s round sides 
and rode furiously for a few moments, then 
she stopped short and looked about her, with 
a feeling that she was going the wrong way. 
She sat very still in her saddle. How quiet 
it was ! 

Suddenly the spell of the desert silence 
came over her and appalled her with its in- 
tensity, its brooding mystery, its strangeness. 
It was everywhere. It was so big — and she 
was so little ! She had never felt so little 
before. What was the great Thing going to 
do with her? It was so calm, so terrible — 


96 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

it was surely coming, coming, coming to 
destroy. 

Only a few moments ago the desert had 
seemed so kind — now it was letting some 
bogey-monster loose. 

“ Father Dick ! ” she cried tensely. 

Her voice shrilled out into nothingness. 

“ Father Dick, — Father Dick ! ” she cried 
out again louder and louder. 

Each time her voice was swallowed up by 
the great mocking stillness of the desert. It 
seemed to muffle her cry and to smother it. 
Jean desperately wailed a last hoarse sobbing 
cry, feeling as if the awful silence was placing 
an invisible hand over her mouth. 

She felt held in a strange thrall. Some un- 
seen power held her — an iron power that 
would not let her go. It was a slipping, 
creeping Something — a dragon-thing — cold 
and horrible. How could anything that she 
couldn’t see be so frightful? It made her 
shiver and rock in her saddle. 

“ Please, please let me go,” she cried. 


97 


The Runaway Road 

“ Oh, let me go and I will be good. Oh, Big 
Thing, let me go — please let me go,” she 
sobbed out, lifting her face piteously to the 
dome of the sky. 

Again the stillness, sneering at her and — 
waiting. 

Jean threw her arms about Trix’s neck. 

Why didn’t It come? Why didn’t It 
come ? If It must come, why did It wait and 
make her so afraid ? She clenched her hands 
in suspense and buried her face miserably in 
Trix’s mane. She shut her eyes tightly and 
hardly breathed. Her heart beat furiously ; 
in a minute It would jump. 

Presently she opened one eye cautiously. 
The Thing was so slow maybe she could get 
away from It. She lifted herself in the saddle 
quickly and startled Trix with a hard whack 
of the reins. Action gave her courage — and 
away she rode, breathing fast and looking 
over her shoulder. It would be just like the 
Thing to snatch at her from behind. 

She came again to a well traveled road. 


98 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

r 

She thought of other people for the first time. 
She did not know that she would have to be 
very far away indeed from Tonopah, to be 
away from people. It seemed a very remote 
possibility to her that anybod}^ could come 
along. Yet it spurred her on with new cour- 
age. Somebody might come w r ho could save 
her from the Thing. She strained her eyes 
to see if there were any one in sight. 

Suddenly she saw a man on horseback, and 
started toward him, zigzagging through the 
sage-brush in a frenzy of haste to make a 
short cut and reach him. She had no 
thought of fear — even if he were a Robber 
Man he would feel sorry and try to save a 
little girl like her from the Thing. Trix 

? j 

seemed very slow. The man’s horse was so 
much faster. At last the man turned and 
saw her. He slowed his horse and waited for 
her. 

Jean jerked her pony up beside his sleek 

• 

bay horse, which stood impatiently at his 
master’s reining. 



HE LIFTED HER AND HELD HER 
























The Runaway Road 99 

“ Hello, little stranger,” said the man, 
“ what can I do for you ? ” 

She looked at the man’s eyes. They were 
kind. 

“ Please don’t let the Thing — the awful 
Thing get me,” she cried dropping her reins 
and holding out her shaking arms to the tall 
dark man. 

He gave a low whistle. 

She would have fallen from her saddle if he 
had not caught her. He lifted her and held 
her in his arms gently. Her head sank 
limply upon his shoulder, which, she thought, 
was very much broader than Father Dick’s. 

She stopped trembling. She was safe — 
this man was so big, he would save her. She 
peeked over his shoulder fearfully — the Thing 
might after all be bigger. She looked at her 
protector and was reassured. At last she 
could answer the soothing voice which asked 
her questions. 

“ I — I followed the runaway road — and I 

got all turned round — I didn’t know which 

» 

> % 

* » > 

0 > 

3 » > 

>3 > 


ioo A Little Princess of Tonopah 

road was which — I didn’t know howto get back 
to Tonopah — and then — the Thing came.” 

“ What in the world? What thing?” 
asked the tall man in a voice so full of sym- 
pathy that Jean’s arm went round his neck 
while she told between quivers of tears. 

“ It was something I couldn’t see — some- 
thing very, very still — It — It was so big — and 
It was just waiting to jump — It — It would 
have got me if — if you hadn’t come. Did — 
did It never get after you ? And weren’t you 
afraid ? Do you know what It was ? ” 

“ Yes,” he answered, patting her and com- 
prehending at once. “ I know — I know. 
Once I was lost — and for a day and a night I 
fought the Thing. But there ain’t no need 
for you to be afraid now. We’re steppin’ 
on Tonopah’s skirts, we’re so near. You 
thought you was a lot farther away than you 
are. Just come along with me and I’ll take 
care of you.” 

“ But you were going the other way,” cried 
Jean. 


101 


The Runaway Road 

“ No matter, — I was just ridin’ around, 
thinkin’ something out. I’d not be very far 
away from Tonopah on a horse. An auto- 
mobile’s the only thing fit for this desert. 
Now get back on your pony and we’ll hit 
the trail home.” 

He helped Jean back in her saddle and 
they rode along side by side. How different 
everything suddenly seemed ! Jean soon 
found herself talking as if nothing had 
happened. She answered all the tall man’s 
questions about herself and laughed at the 
way he said things. 

“ You don’t talk a bit like Father Dick,” 
she said, “ or Father Ambrose, or The Rain- 
bow Lady. Do you know her ? Her hus- 
band’s name is Hugh Bronson and he fixes 
things that get crooked.” 

“ Yes, I know her some,” answered the tall 
man. “ Hugh Bronson’s our lawyer and I 
guess we give him more to do than any other 
clients he’s got — even that Philadelphia set. 
I see Mrs. Bronson in the office sometimes 


102 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

and around — but you see we don’t just run in 
the same set. I don’t go much on the camp’s 
society ways — and besides, outside of busi- 
ness, I’ve got a name in this place about as 
bad as a train robber.” 

« “ However did you make it like that ? ” 
asked Jean. “ Robbers are so very bad. Is a 
train robber the worst kind ? What did you 
do to make the people think you were so bad 
as that? ” 

“ That’s easy — I try to amuse myself some 
when I’m not workin’ — and I’ve tried dif- 
ferent ways — mostly without getting much 
out of them — but always seeing things to a 
finish. And I don’t think it’s worth while 
takin’ the trouble coverin’ up things like 
some fellows do — especially that college set 
of fellows the town’s full of. Some of ’em go 
at getting rich on the same coverin’ up prin- 
ciple. But I’ve never seen things that way 
myself. So just as every one knows they’re 
sure of a square deal when they do business 
with me — and they know I go it pretty strong 


The Runaway Road 103 

when I’m out for a good time — and ” 

He did not go on, for somehow the things 
that made up his “ good time ” seemed things 
that one ought to be ashamed of before a little 
girl like Jean. He summed up everything in 
order to be honest without giving details. 
“ I guess I'm about as bad as they are made,” 
he said, turning and looking at Jean. 

Jean was quiet a minute. Then she said, 
as if she were thinking out loud : 

“ My father says square sinning — not get- 
ting behind doors and hiding — that’s the 
easiest kind to forgive.” 

“ Forgive ? ” jerked out her companion. “ I 
don’t ask no one to forgive me for anything 
I do.” 

Jean glanced at him with wide eyes. 

“ Would you mind telling me if you carry 
a pistol?” she asked breathlessly. 

“ Of course, I’m not goin’ around half- 
dressed.” He pulled his coat sidewise and 
revealed his belt with a revolver in it. 

Jean gave a little cry of pleasure. 


104 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“I’d like to hold it,” she said, stopping 
Trix. 

“ You’re a queer kind of a girl, not afraid of 
a revolver. Hold it like this.” He handed 
her the weapon and she held it carefully in 
her hands, looking at it with a face full of 
awe. He took it away from her, laughing at 
Jean’s glance of great admiration. 

“How long have you been here?” she 
asked. This had come to be a set question 
with her to be asked of every one she got 
acquainted with. 

“ Ever since the camp started. I struck 
the sage-brush as soon as I heard about the 
first strike, and I’ve been here workin’ hard 
ever since. I’ve not had a good rest since 
that day I jumped off my jockey saddle at 
the Tanforan race-track to come here.” 

“ Were you a jockey ? Is that why you act 
so used to your horse? ” 

“Yes, I was a jockey — and I’ve been other 
things not so good — most anything that came 
handy rather than go back to farming at 


The Runaway Road 105 

my old home. Dad was through with me, 
he said, and never sent me any money. But 
he never could get me back by tryin’ to starve 
me. I made up my mind never to go back 
with them cattle back there. I guess I’d have 
killed every one of ’em if I’d ever had to go 
back. Sometimes I get tired of it here, but 
there’s not any way to quit it, seems like, and 
if I did there’s nothin’ in particular to do in- 
stead. When I landed here I didn’t have 
but eighty cents ; then pretty soon things 
began pickin’ up for me and I was the first 
fellow in camp to pay for things with gold 
eagles. Ever since then the fellows have 
called me * Gold Eagle Ned.’ I’ve scraped 
together more’n enough gold to make three 
millions now.” 

He spoke with a certain careless pride — 
then very suddenly he was sorry that he had 
spoken. His three millions all in a moment 
seemed like three coppers as he caught the 
ingenuous glance of Jean’s frank eyes. 

“ Three million dollars ought to buy most 


io6 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

any kind of a plaything you want,” said 
Jean. 

“ I guess it will — money’ll buy about every- 
thing.” 

“ It will not buy what I want,” Jean said, 
looking off at the sky-line. 

“ You must be wantin’ the moon,” he said. 

“ It’s something I have to work for all by 
myself.” 

“ Well, here’s hopin’ you’ll make good,” 
he laughed. 

Then, as they came around a mountain, 
Tonopah came in full view. 

“ To think,” cried Jean, “ that it was all 
the time so near — and I thought I was lost.” 

“ You aren’t the first person that’s scared 
himself to death over a bogey made out of 
his own head.” 

Jean felt comforted. She began to feel a 
little ashamed of her terror, which already 
seemed less real to her. They galloped along 
quickly, and Jean gave a little shriek of joy 
as the tent-home came in sight. 


The Runaway Road 107 

Her father was just returning from The 
Rainbow Lady’s house, where he had been 
hunting for Jean. He had been everywhere, 
and he was in a panic of alarm. She was 
only an hour late, but that hour had been 
the most terrible hour of his life. 

He caught her from her saddle and held 
her as if he never meant to let her go. 

“ Father Dick,” said Jean as soon as she 
got her breath, “ this is The Gold Eagle Man, 
who brought me back.” 

“ Ned Osborne’s my name,” said Jean’s com- 
panion quickly, as if ashamed of his sobriquet. 

Richard Kingsley was too moved to speak. 
He held out his hand, and then turned 
quickly away with Jean in his arms. 

“ I hope I’ll see you again,” called out Jean 
over her father’s shoulder to Ned Osborne as 
he rode off. 

“ If I’m on earth,” answered The Gold 
Eagle Man. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE CACTUS WIZARDS 

“ You didn’t expect to see me again so 
soon, did you ? ” 

Jean was surprised by The Gold Eagle 
Man’s voice as she sat on the step indus- 
triously mending a torn place in the skirt 
she had worn the day before. She jumped 
up happily. 

“ Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come! I’ve just 
been thinking about what a good time we 
had yesterday.” 

“ A good time ! ” The Gold Eagle Man ex- 
claimed. “ You’ve forgotten mighty quick, 
it seems to me, how scared you were. I 
shouldn’t think you’d ever want to think 
of it again.” 

“ Oh, but I do. You see, it all seems so 

different when I’m sitting here on my step 

and looking at roofs all around. It seems 

108 


The Cactus Wizards 109 

just like I'd been in a book and lived a few 
pages. Only it was more exciting than any- 
thing in a book I’ve ever read. Didn’t you 
like it?” 

“ Yes — I liked it, because I found you.” 

“ You didn’t — I found you.” 

“ Let’s say we found each other — then we 
needn’t argue.” 

“ I feel as if I’d known you a long, long 
time.” 

“ So you have — eighteen hours, thirty-one 
minutes and five seconds,” said The Gold 
Eagle Man consulting his watch. “ And 
you’ll have plenty of chance to get acquainted 
more. Do you know what I’ve brought this 
extra horse along for ? ” 

Jean looked at the little black horse which 
was pawing the gravel spiritedly. 

“ I hope it’s not for any little girl around 
the corner to ride.” 

“ Not while it belongs to me. Its name’s 
Ginger, and Ginger is yours to ride whenever 
you feel like hittin’ the saddle.” 


no A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ I feel like it now/’ cried Jean excitedly, 
“ if Father Dick says yes.” 

“He’s already said it — I met him down the 
trail. So hop on and we’ll take a turn on 
the desert. There’s something out there you 
must have a look at before another sun snuffs 
out.” 

Jean jumped into the saddle and away they 
galloped to the desert road. Jean gave little 
cries of delight as she felt the fresh sweep of 
the desert air against her face again. 

“ I feel like that too, only I don’t say it out 
aloud,” laughed The Gold Eagle Man. “ No 
one can beat this for a good combination — a 
good horse and a good road.” 

“ What makes the road so good way out 
here in the desert? ” 

“ Well, you see a good many people are 
hurrying around considerable to find out 
what they came out to this country for — and 
they make plenty of roads and keep ’em well 
traveled. This road leads to Goldfield 
camp.” 


The Cactus Wizards m 

“ Is that where we are going ? ” asked Jean, 
consumed with curiosity to know what she was 
going to see. 

“ No, it's something that hasn’t a thing to 
do with the mining camps,” answered The 
Gold Eagle Man. 

Presently he drew rein suddenly. 

“ What does that look like to you ? ” he 
asked, pointing to the left with his quirt. 

“ Like — like some people huddled together 
— like Indian people. What is it really ? ” 

“ They are the Cactus Wizards.” 

“ Wizards? The kind that say spells and 
do queer things that other people can’t do ? ” 
“ Yes, only they can’t do them any more 
— you can see if you look close enough that 
they’re not people at all, but cactuses. A 
body can’t tell at a distance but what they’re 
not sure enough Indians hunched up together. 
It’s a queer thing how a cactus can twist itself 
into such human shapes. Now look at that 
one on this end — it looks for all the world 
like a big chief with his tomahawk in the air. 


112 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

The Indians tell a queer yam about these 
cactuses.” 

“ Oh, tell it to me.” 

“ I thought you’d want to hear it — that’s 
why I brought you out to see ’em. Well, 
the Indians say that a long time ago there 
was a tribe called the Vitteshoes. They had 
the evil eye.” 

“ Like the basilisk in the old legend that 

/ 

poisoned everything it looked at ? ” 

“ Yes, something like that — and besides 
that they could work the very deuce with the 
other Indians by their charms and spells. 
These Vitteshoes had the cactus for their 
emblem, and the squaws embroidered it on 
everything. Besides that they all had it 
tattooed on their bodies.” 

“ Oh, I saw a tattooed man once,” cried 
Jean. “ He was a sailor and he had an anchor 
on his arm just above his elbow — but I’m in- 
terrupting. Please excuse me. Why did 
these Indians have the cactus for an emblem ? 
It’s such a queer thing to have.” 


The Cactus Wizards 113 

“ Well — the reason they had the cactus tat- 
tooed on them was for the same reason that 
your sailorman had an anchor on him — be- 
cause it stood for something mighty impor- 
tant in their lives. They got all their power 
from the concoctions they made from the 
cactus. They found out secrets about it that 
no one else knew. They had a big plan to 
make way with all the other Indians in 
America — that was before any white men 
came over here. 

“ Little by little these Vitteshoes killed off 
the other Indians. They would cast some 
spell, then draw the different Indians to death 
in some whirlpool or chasm. No one ever 
met a Vitteshoe in a face-to-face fight. All 
the Indians were as ’fraid as could be of the 
Wizards — for they never knew who would 
be next to be put under their spells. And 
once the wizard spell got a hold of an Indian 
there was no shakin’ loose. It was an awful 
feelin’, like a nightmare, I should judge, only 
worse, because there was no wakin’ up. An 


ii4 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Indian was more afraid of a Vitteslioe than 
the wildest kind of a mountain lion or the hun- 
griest grizzly bear that ever snapped his jaws. 

“ Pretty soon these Cactus Wizards made up 
their minds to make one grand sweep and 
clear up the country of all the tribes ’ceptin’ 
their own. Then they’d be high Moguls and 
have the whole place to themselves, you see. 
They pow-wowed ’round their fires out here 
on the desert and kept workin’ their spells 
day and night. Their plan was to bring all 
the tribes together to the Grand Canyon and 
then make ’em plunge to their death. The 
different tribes began cornin’ from east and 
west — north and south. Some tribes that 
had never seen each other before met for 
the first time. They all knew they were 
under the same spell, so they didn’t do any 
fightin’ — sympathized, I s’pose, and exchanged 
beads. They didn’t have much time to sit 
around gettin’ acquainted, for the spell of the 
Wizards kept ’em hustlin’ toward the canyon, 
and goin’ it fast, too. 


The Cactus Wizards 115 

“ Well, all the tribes were brought to the 
canyon finally, and the Wizards were jumpin’ 
pretty high around their fires and drinkin’ 
pretty deep of their cactus concoctions so as 
to keep things goin’, when it came time to 
make ’em all jump head first and be swal- 
lowed up forevermore. 

“ Just as the Indians were standin’ ready to 
jump, utterin’ all sorts of emphatic-like yells 
against doin’ it — the Great Spirit turned those 
Vitteshoe Indians into cactuses and let the 
other tribes all loose to hunt or make mocca- 
sins or do anything they took a notion. So 
there the Cactus Wizards are to this day, and 
I s’pose always will be unless the Great Spirit 
gets to feelin’ too kind, and I guess there’s no 
danger of that.” 

“ Oh, that’s such a good story. Do you 
suppose it really could be true? ” cried Jean. 

“ What do you think ? ” 

“ Well — when I look at the cactuses it seems 
as if it really might be a true story, but I sup- 
pose it’s just a legend. Father Dick says 


1 1 6 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

every race has its legends. I like the Indian 
ones. Do you know any more ? ” 

“ Indian yarns, you mean? Yes, plenty of 
’em. You see that stretch of alkali way off 
there ? ” 

The Gold Eagle Man pointed to his right. 

“ Why it looks just like a little lake with 
the waves dancing and splashing in the sun- 
light.” 

“ Once it was a lake, so the Indians say, a 
lake as clear as crystal. They called it Onomo 
— lake of truth. There wasn’t a cloud in the 
sky too feathery to be reflected in it. It was 
just like a mirror. Why, once an Indian 
looked in and saw himself, and his reflection 
looked so much like another Indian that he 
went after it with his tomahawk. Yes, for a 
fact, they say. You can see mighty plain 
how much the Indians must have thought of 
that lake — out here in the desert where water 
was about as precious as gold until we learned 
how to lay water-pipes. This lake appeared 
to come from some kind of a spring that 


The Cactus Wizards 117 

welled up all the year round day in and day 
out, Sundays and all. So the water was good 
to drink, not brackish and salt like you’d 
think, not havin’ an outlet.” 

“ Like the Great Salt Lake it tells about in 
my geography ? ” 

“ Yes, that’s what I mean. This lake was 
nothin’ like that, and you can just guess the 
Indians were glad of it. The Indians that 
lived here then were the Washoes, and they 
had a pretty hard time keepin’ off the other 
tribes on account of the lake. The Shoshones 
had made up their mind to get the lake by 
some hook or crook and live in the neighbor- 
hood. They didn’t believe in monopoly, you 
see. 

“ One day a young brave came running to 
the chief with the news that their tribe was 
going to be betrayed into the hands of the 
Shoshones. He swung in the air a belt with 
queer lookin’ reptiles worked all over it. The 
young brave had found the belt lying friendly 
like alongside of a Shoshone tomahawk by 


n 8 A Little Pri ncess of Tonopah 

an old Joshua tree known as the Traitor’s Tree 
where many secret meetings were held. The 
old chief jumped into the air when he saw it. 

“ ‘ Winopinic’s belt ! ’ he hollered, wavin’ it 
over his head for the rest to see. 

“ 1 Winopinic’s belt ! ’ they all sung out after 
him. 

“ Winopinic was the leader among the 
young braves — the very last one to do a mean 
trick like betraying his tribe. But some of 
the other young bucks were jealous of him 
and jumped at the chance to get him in 
trouble. The Indian girls he never paid any 
attention to began to whisper around that 
Winopinic was in love with a Shoshone maid. 
They never could get over it because he i\ever 
noticed how many beads they braided in 
their hair or the way they wore their blan- 
kets. So the whole tribe got set against 
Winopinic. They watched him out of the 
corners of their eyes and wouldn’t have any- 
thing to do with him. Winopinic didn’t 
have any idea for some time what was up. 


The Cactus Wizards 119 

Bein’ a chatty sort of a fellow he missed sittin’ 
around the fire and swappin’ stories about the 
hunt. Pretty soon he got tired of not 
knowin’ what the trouble was and went and 
asked the chief right out. 

“ The old chief up and accused him of dis- 
loyalty to his tribe. 

“ 1 It’s not true/ Winopinic said mighty 
quick. 

“ But the old chief shook his head and 
wouldn’t believe him. 

“ That night the Shoshones fell upon them 
and tried to massacre the Washoes. The 
Washoes managed to win out. After the fight 
was over they found Winopinic with his 
hands and feet bound in his tent. That set- 
tled things. They said that he’d let himself 
be bound so’s he needn’t lift a hand against 
the Shoshones. Well, it was pretty hard 
livin’ for Winopinic after that — and it wasn’t 
long before he decided life really wasn’t worth 
anything unless he could clear things up. So 
he went to the old chief. 


i2o A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ 1 1 can prove myself/ he said, ‘ if you will 
come with me to Onomo.’ 

“ The chief and all the rest of the tribe got 
up and followed him — it made a little excite- 
ment, and so they went, though they didn’t 
really believe he could do what he said. 

“ He stood on the edge of the lake and 
weighted himself with a monster big stone. 
They all watched him without sayin’ a word. 
He lifted his head a minute and appeared to 
be gazin’ off at something no one could see. 

“ 1 I go to my death/ he said. ‘ Rather than 
live among you and endure your suspicion, — 
or die at your hands a traitor, I give up my 
own life. I am going to leap into the waters 
of Onomo, which is called the lake of truth. 
I call to the spirit of the lake to hear me. If 
I am guiltless, may the Great Spirit change 
the crystal sweetness of these waters to that 
which is bitter as gall to your lips.’ 

“ Then Winopinic plunged into the lake. 
There was a gurgle of ripples that foamed up 
like they do when anything flops in the water 


The Cactus Wizards 121 

all of a sudden. One of Winopinic’s arms 
shot into the air a second and the sight 
of its big muscles made every one think 
of his strength. Then he went to the bot- 
tom. 

“ The waters had hardly smoothed out 
again when the Indians saw them all turned 
to a yellowish brackish brown. They stooped 
and drank from the palms of their hands — 
but not one could swallow the water — it was 
the worst tastin’ mixture they’d ever tried. 
When they got through coughin’ and chokin’ 
they looked at the lake again and found it 
had turned into alkali — like it is now — all in 
crusts. They set up a wail that must have 
echoed round the poles, but it didn’t seem to 
affect the Great Spirit any, so they had to 
pick up their tents and leave the place they’d 
been so proud to be in. They looked back 
and they could see the lake just as we see it 
now — lookin’ a little ways off for all the 
world like real water. It looked so real that 
some of ’em came back to make sure — but 


122 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

they only had to hurry along to catch up 
with the rest who were leavin'.” 

“ Do you suppose Winopinic is lying at the 
bottom yet?” Jean half whispered gazing as 
if fascinated at the shining alkali stretches. 

“ I couldn’t say as to that — he may be — 
p’raps he’s petrified. When we run short of 
anything to do, we’ll investigate. Now we 
must be turnin’ round and makin’ for home, or 
your father’ll be thinkin’ you’re lost again.” 
“ No, for he said he knew he could 
trust me with you anywhere. He says you’ve 
got the name of being the honestest man in 
camp.” 

“ Well, it wouldn’t do any one any good to 
kidnap you, that’s one thing sure,” laughed 
The Gold Eagle Man, changing the subject. 

“ You mean because Father Dick hasn’t 

i 

lots of money in the bank, so he couldn’t pay 
to get me back? ” flashed Jean. 

“ Yes, that makes you safer out here than 
some youngsters would be with some people.” 
“ Any one would be safe with you,” cried 


The Cactus Wizards 123 

Jean admiringly. “ You are as crystal true 
as Winopinic.” 

The Gold Eagle Man drew rein a moment 
and put out his hand. 

“ Shake/’ he said, his voice a little husky. 
“ Shake, little pardner — I’d rather hear you 
say that than any one I know.” 

Jean shook hands very gravely and felt 
somehow very proud. There was something 
in his voice that troubled her. 

“ Do you know, your voice has sometimes 
such an all-alone sound. I wish I could 
make you lose it,” she said earnestly. 

“ Now that I’ve found you I think it will 
go away — if I can see you enough. Oh, little 
princess, I need you.” 

Jean leaned from her saddle and stretched 
out her arms. The Gold Eagle Man lifted 
her gently from her saddle and kissed her. 

“ I want to ride for a while as I rode yester- 
day,” she said, snuggling against his shoulder. 

“ But I can’t carry you, because Ginger 
won’t be led, so you’ll have to jump back, 


124 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

more’s the pity. I’d like to ride to the other 
ends of the earth with you.” 

“ If it wasn’t for Father Dick I’d go,” 
said Jean promptly. 

“ Yes — if it wasn’t for Father Dick,” said 
The Gold Eagle Man in a strange tone. 

Then he placed her quickly in her saddle 
and they set out homeward at a brisk gallop. 

“ Don’t look at Ginger as if you’re never 
goin’ to see him again,” he said as Jean dis- 
mounted and patted her horse good-bye. 
“ You can ride him every day when I’m not 
too busy to take you.” 


CHAPTER VII 


ginger’s adventure 

“ Ginger’s kidnapped ! ” 

This was the announcement which The Gold 
Eagle Man came hurrying a week later to 
make to Jean one morning before she had had 
her breakfast. 

Jean’s eyes dilated, then suddenly she closed 
them in the way she had when she was very 
determined. 

“ Who has dared to steal Ginger ? I will 
not have him stolen ! ” Her foot went down 
with an emphatic thump. 

“ I don’t know how you’re going to help it. 
He’s gone for a fact, and I can’t get any trace 
of him yet. And the worst of it is — there’s 
no tellin’ what will happen to him. Look at 
this.” 

The Gold Eagle Man held out a badly 

printed piece of paper which read : 

125 




126 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ We have kidnapped Ginger becaus you 
can afford to pay a Ransom to git him back. 
If you will leave $50 in Gold, without any 
marks on, at twelve o’clock tonit in the hole 
We have dug in the left hand side of the Con- 
gragatnal Church cellar, wich is alius open, 
— We will give Ginger back — Safe and Sound. 
But if you don’t do as We say We will only 
bring Part of Ginger back. 

“ P. S. You can bet We wouldn’t do this if 
We didn’t Have to have the Money. 

“ P. S. You must promis on your life not 
to watch the cellar for 1 hour after you put 
the gold in. If you set the police on or let 
the town know you will never get Ginger 
even if you get Us.” 

“ Now, what do you think of that? ” asked 
The Gold Eagle Man, his voice shaking with 
anger and distress. 

“ I think it’s a terrible tragedy ! Doesn’t 
it sound wicked ? ” cried Jean excitedly. “ Oh, 
my beautiful Ginger — we must get him back. 
Think what they may do to him ! They may 
beat him or starve him.” 

“ Yes, that’s the trouble — they might do 
more than that ; the rascals might kill him 


Ginger’s Adventure 127 

or lame him for life or cut his tail off — there’s 
no way of knowin’. There are all sorts of 
people in this country ; some of ’em don’t 
stop at anything.” 

“ Oh-h-h ! ” screamed Jean, running for 
her hat. “ Where do you s’pose they’ve 
hidden him ? ” 

“ Some unheard-of place, likely. If I 
thought I’d be sure to find him I’d set 
people goin’ after him.” 

“ Oh, but you couldn’t do that ; for look 
what the letter says — they will never let you 
get Ginger that way. It’s too big a risk. If 
they thought you were going to find him 
they’d kill him or something. The only way 
is to put the money in the hole and not tell a 
soul about it.” 

“But it’s such a hold-up! They’ve been 
readin’ the papers, I s’pose — about that little 
Wickliff boy that was kidnapped in San 
Francisco. That’s what set ’em goin’. Why, 
there’ll be no end to the thing if I give in 
and let ’em have the money.” 


128 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ Oh, but what’s fifty dollars beside Gin- 
ger ? ” 

“ That’s so — it’s not much, it’s nothing at 
all — that’s what makes me wonder a little. 
It’s queer they didn’t set a bigger price. 
That’s no haul at all.” 

“ Maybe it’s some poor person who wouldn’t 
do it if he didn’t just have to. Please say 
you’ll put the money there.” 

“ That’s the easiest way, I guess. I don’t 
care about the money — it’s not much when a 
man has it, that’s certain, to save a horse 
like Ginger. It’s just the idea of bein’ held 
up I don’t like — it’s like lettin’ yourself be 
robbed.” 

♦ 

“ Oh, that doesn’t matter — nothing matters 
but getting Ginger back ! Promise me 
you’ll do just what the letter says.” 

“ Yes, I’ll promise, of course ; we’ve got to 
have Ginger back.” 

“ Let’s go see if the hole’s there,” cried 
Jean, beginning to enjoy the spirit of adven- 
ture, now that The Gold Eagle Man had 


Ginger’s Adventure 129 

given his word and it seemed settled to her 
that Ginger would be restored safely to them. 

The hole was there, freshly dug under a 
big stone. 

As Jean stooped to examine it she saw 
something bright half hidden by a clod. It 
was a little stub of a well-known green and 
red striped pencil. She picked it up and put 
it into her pocket before The Gold Eagle Man 
saw. 

“ I must go right back to breakfast,” she 
said quickly. 

As The Gold Eagle Man walked home with 
her, she was very quiet. 

“ Adventure’s not quite so nice when you 
get it at first hand, is it?” said The Gold 
Eagle Man, noting her silence. 

“ No,” said Jean decidedly ; “ no, it cer- 
tainly isn’t.” 

“ Well, cheer up; Ginger’s all right, I guess, 
and we’ll have him back for our ride to- 
morrow all right.” 

As soon as The Gold Eagle Man had gone 


130 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

and she had had breakfast, Jean asked Father 
Dick if she might go over to the Western 
Union Telegraph Office to see Tubby about 
something. 

Tubby was sitting on a high stool waiting 
for orders when Jean went in. 

“Isn’t this your pencil, Tubby?” asked 
Jean breathlessly. “ I’ve seen you use it so 
much — you had it just yesterday.” 

“ Yes, it was mine, but I gave it to Skin.” 

“ Oh ! ” Jean gave a little gasp. She 
looked very hard into Tubby’s eyes and saw 
they were just as clear and untroubled as 
usual. He certainly had nothing on his 
mind. 

“ Where’s Skin now ? ” she asked. 

“ He’s just deliverin’ a telegram on the hill.” 

Jean was out of the door in a flash. She 
could see Skin coming down the trail. She 
ran as hard as she could to meet him. 

“ Oh, Skin,” she cried ; “ what have you 
done with Ginger?” 

Skin’s face grew ghastly white. His lips 


Ginger’s Adventure 131 

moved, but no sound came. At last he spoke 
in a choked voice : 

“ How did you find out? ” 

“ Never mind,— I know,” answered Jean 
decisively. “ So get him right away for me. 
Whatever did you do it for, Skin? Was it 
just you? Why, I s’posed when I read the 
letter that 1 We ’ meant some big ruffians.” 

“I said ‘We’ just to make it scary. But 
I’d like to know how you ever found out.” 

“ I’ll tell you when you get me Ginger. 
What did you do it for, Skin ? I don’t know 
what to make of you — are you learning how 
to be a horse-thief or kidnapper or something 
terrible ? ” 

“ I did it — I did it so’s my sister could rest 
— I didn’t want the money for myself — you 
needn’t to think I’d ever have taken all that 
risk for myself. It was no easy job gettin’ 
hold of Ginger. You know my sister’s just 
worn out clerkin’ in that old store. She 
comes home every night with such an awful 
headache and she looks so thin an’ white. 


132 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Her eyes used to be so bright an’ now they’re 
so sorry lookin’. I just couldn’t stand it any 
longer, an’ I fixed up this plan so’s she could 
take a little vacation. The Gold Eagle Man 
can easy enough afford it,” said Skin dog- 
gedly. “ Now I s’pose you’ll tell him and 
he’ll put me in jail.” 

Jean looked at him searchingly. 

“ Are you telling me the hope-to-die truth, 
Skin ? ” 

“ ’Course I am ; what’s the use tellin’ any- 
thing else, now that I’m found out? ” 

“ Well, then I’ll just show you, Skin Hud- 
son, that a girl can keep a secret. You just 
get Ginger for me and I promise you I’ll 
never tell who stole him. It’ll be our secret, 
Skin, just yours and mine — forever and ever.” 
“ Honor bright? ” 

“ Honor bright — here is my hand.” 

Skin hastily wiped his hand before he held 
it out. Jean’s firm brown fingers gave such 
a grip that Skin was convinced the compact 
meant something. 


Ginger’s Adventure 133 

“ All right/’ he said. “ Now come on and 
I’ll get Ginger for you.” 

“ I’m so excited, Skin ; I can’t imagine 
where you’ve got him.” 

“ Oh, it’s a good place all right — you’d 
never guess,” said Skin with something of a 
swagger. 

“ Is it far ? ” 

“ No, we’re almost there.” 

Skin hurried along and stopped before the 
barrel house. 

“ Whyee ! You don’t mean that you’ve 
got him in there? ” cried Jean. 

“ Yes, I have. No one was usin’ the place ; 
the old door was unlocked — the padlock 
was broken — an’ I just got a new one an’ I 
had the best kind of a hidin’-place for Ginger.” 
“ But it’s so near every one ; weren’t you 
afraid people would see? ” 

“ I put him in late last night and I put 
enough stuff in for him to eat till I’d get him 
out. We must hurry up now so’s people’ll 
not think anything about seein’ us here. No- 


134 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

body seems to be around. I’ll just open the 
door offhand and lead Ginger out and if any 
one sees they’ll just think we’ve just tied him 
up there for a while.” 

The new padlock opened with a snap and 
Ginger greeted Jean with a little whinny of 
recognition. 

“ Now, jump on him and hurry along with 
him back to The Gold Eagle Man,” said 
Skin, quickly handing the bridle to Jean. 

She was on Ginger’s back in a trice and 
was just turning around when Skin called 
after her : 

“ Wait a minute — how’d you find out? ” 

For answer Jean tossed him the striped pen- 
cil. “ You dropped it by the hole you dug.” 

Skin was just about to crush it under his 
heel when Jean stopped him. 

“ Break it in two pieces, Skin — you keep 
half and give me half. We’ll keep the pieces 
forever and ever to remember our secret.” 

Skin snapped the pencil and held out half 
to Jean. 


'35 


Ginger’s Adventure 

“ It don’t depend on keepin’ a piece of pen- 
cil — my not gettin’ into jail,” he said eye- 
ing her closely. 

“ No, but it’s nicer to have the pencil ; it 
makes it all more secrety. Skin, are you 
sorry you did it? ” 

Skin scowled at her. 

. “ Naw, not a bit.” 

“ Well, I don’t know whether you ought to 
feel sorry or not — I suppose it was very wrong 
and you ought to wear sackcloth and ashes, 
but — I can’t help wishing too that you could 
have got the money. If you could only have 
got it without trying to steal Ginger ! But 
things will come' out all right, Skin — and if I 
ever can, I’ll help make them. I don’t want 
you to be sorry I found the pencil.” 

She shook hands again and flew off down 
the road to The Gold Eagle Man’s office. 

He could scarcely believe his sight when he 
saw Jean gaily waving seated on Ginger’s 
back. 

“ We’ll have our ride to-day after all,” she 


136 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

cried. “I’ve found Ginger — and he’s safe and 
sound.” 

“ Where in the world did you find him, 
Jean?” he cried rushing up and patting 
Ginger’s satiny coat excitedly. 

“ That’s a secret, and you must never, never 
ask me.” 

“ Jean, you’re trying to keep some one from 
getting punished for this.” 

“ Well — if I am, it’s some one that deserves 
to be protected. Please take my word for 
it. But if you don’t, it will not do an}' 
good to try to make me tell, not even if you 
beat me.” 

“ Then what am I to do but take your 
word? ” laughed The Gold Eagle Man, giving 
Ginger a lump of sugar. “ Let’s have our ride 
right away. Ginger looks like he’s had too 
much to eat — he needs exercise.” 


CHAPTER VIII 


A PROSPECTING TRIP 

In those first days Richard Kingsley was at 
a loss which way to turn. Like a tamed ani- 
mal set free he could not recognize his free- 
dom at first. It was so strange without the 
business grind — no store, no desk to call him 
at night. After a while the primitive im- 
pulse in him began to stir and he had a new 
sensation of real freedom. 

He set to work to find out how to get in 
touch with the new life. He had the air of 
a man suddenly come into his own. New 
strength, new hope, new enthusiasm made 
him see in his new environment wonder, 
beauty and romance. Wonder, equal to his 
boy wonder at the power of Aladdin's lamp, 
when he listened to the stories of men's ex- 
periences there; beauty, free and stirring, 

137 


138 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

when he awoke every morning and found 
fresh delight in the desert and the moun- 
tains ; and romance, alluring and full of the 
magic of suggestion, when he looked at the 
dusty trails which led men out upon them 
with the same expectant air children have 
when they push open closed doors, which 
hide shining gifts. 

Very soon there came to him the oppor- 
tunity to go with two other men on a short 
prospecting trip. 

Jean was in tears when she found that she 
could not go too. It was arranged that she 
should stay with Tante Elsa. 

“ You can have different kinds of kucken 
every day,” promised Tante Elsa. 

“ I’m not a little baby to be hushed with 
cakes,” cried Jean. 

“ But you will eat them just the same,” 
laughed Tante Elsa. 

“ Yes, I will eat them, especially the ones 
with the fruits and spice and citron in, but 
I’d rather go with Father Dick.” 


*39 


A Prospecting Trip 

She was distressed because she had to give 
up her tent-home. Her father said that they 
would probably not live in it any more. It 
would be getting too cold soon, and they 
would arrange for some place else when he 
got back. 

“ I was just learning how to be a pioneer. 
I’ll not be one in Tante Elsa’s house. And 
my cactus garden is just getting started.” 

“ It is like pioneers to change about a great 
deal. You must show their spirit. You can 
be a pioneer anywhere if you have the pioneer 
courage.” 

Jean tried, but she found it very hard in 
the first days of her father’s absence to “ make 
her courage stand up straight,” as she ex- 
pressed it to Tubby. 

Tubby was a source of great cheer to her. 
He told her wonderful tales of prospector’s 
luck. One was about a man who followed 
the lead of a little prosaic gopher and there, 
down under the nest, below the white, pow- 
dery talc, he found a veritable bed of gold. 


140 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ You never can tell what’s goin’ to happen. 
It’s worth goin’ to find out,” he said. 

So Jean finally came to feel something of 
the same excitement that her father felt while 
he was making his trip. 

“ What do you s’pose will happen ? It 
makes me have a tiptoe feeling to think 
about it,” she said to The Gold Eagle Man, 
who had taken to eating countless cakes at 
Tante Elsa’s shop. 

“Yes, it’s like that. I’d like to feel like 
walking on my tiptoes again myself — I’ve 
kind of got over it now. Other people do 
my prospectin’ for me now, and it’s far from 
causin’ the same excitement.” 

Tubby did not altogether approve The Gold 
Eagle Man. He conceded his good points, 
however. 

“ He’s got the name of bein’ the squarest 
man in camp in business. He’s one of the 
few men that landed here without a cent 
that’s got to be a millionaire. As a matter o’ 


Hi 


A Prospecting Trip 

fact” — Tubby was very fond of this phrase 
which he had picked up with sundry other 
men’s phrases about town — “ hardly any of 
the real pioneers like him ever got t’ be wuth 
a million. If they ever got it, they wasn’t 
smart enough to keep it, an’ make two or 
three more million out of it, like The Gold 
Eagle Man. Of course he does a lot of things 
people call bad — but that’s jes’ accordin’ to 
how you look at it. I don’ call him so ter- 
rible bad. He don’ get ’nough real fun out 
of the things he does to pay — an’ fellers like 
that never are the heavy villains. 

“ But there’s one thing about ’im I jes’ can’t 
stand. I tell you what, he counts his nickels 
twenty times when it comes to dealin’ ’em out 
to any one ’ceptin’ Ned Osborne himself. 
Why, he only gives us fellers a shiny dime 
extra when we bring him telegrams. T. Oddie 
an’ lots of men not half so rich as The Gold 
Eagle Man never think o’ handin’ us out 
less ’n a quarter an’ lots o’ times it’s a dollar 
when the telegram says somethin’ extra good. 


142 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

It’s so — you can just ast Skin er Cop er any of 
the fellers. 

“ An’ onct I saw him when they was a-takin’ 
up a c’llection for some poor feller that’d been 
sick an* most died an’ didn’t have any money 
to start out again with an’ wasn’t well enough 
to work again yet. Ever’ one else was handin’ 
out somethin’ an’ The Gold Eagle Man he jes’ 
laughed an’ said, 1 Oh, there’s always some 
poor stick that’s sick with nothin’ in his 
pocket. I’m tired of ’em. Why don’t they 
stay at home if they don’t know how to take 
care of themselves in this kind of a country ? ’ 
An’ he wouldn’t put in a cent. He jes’ 
nat’lly hates any one that begs er hasn’t got 
backbone enough to get ’long fer hisself. 
An’ he’s terrible ’fraid that some one’s goin’ 
ter get the best of The Gold Eagle Man some 
way er other. He don’ want ter help any one 
’less it’s goin’ ter help The Gold Eagle Man 
too.” 

It was very hard for Jean to believe this of 
The Gold Eagle Man when she thought of 


A Prospecting Trip 143 

how kind he had been out on the desert. 
But Tubby always told her the truth about 
people. 

“ He needs some of Father Dick’s and 
Father Ambrose’s kind of religion — he ought 
to learn how to serve,” she said gravely. 
Tubby laughed very hard. 

“ He jes’ wants to be served — an’ I guess 
he’d stop eatin’ cakes in this shop soon 
enough if you’d say serve to him.” 

“ Well, then I’ll not say it, because he eats 
lots of cakes — he says he has a bottomless ap- 
petite for them — and Tante Elsa wants to buy 
some new window curtains with roses on them. 
Besides I like him, and he’s my friend for al- 
ways because he saved me from the Thing.” 
“ Ho, that wasn’t anything, he didn’t 
have to buy the Thing off.” 

Jean thought for a long time seriously 
while she put some clean fringed paper on the 
shelves for Tante Elsa. 

“ He must evolute — that’s the only way,” 
she said finally. 


144 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“How can he do that? What's it like?" 

“ Sort of like Skin on the trapeze, when he 
looks like he’s growin’ out of himself.” 

“ Oh, I see. Well — somethin’ll have ter 
jar The Gold Eagle Man pretty hard to start 
him growin’ away from hisself. He likes 
The Gold Eagle Man too well to want to grow 
very far away from ’im.” 

“ Tubby, sometimes I think you’re a pessi- 
mist.” 

“ Gee — I hope not — it don’t sound clean. 
What in the world is it? Is it one of your 
made-up words or one of Beatrice’s French 
ones? ” 

“ Any one’s a pessimist who makes his 
thoughts about things ugly with dark trim- 
mings when he might make them pretty with 
bright.” 

“ Well — then I’m not one, for I’ve frilled 
up your Father Dick’s prospectin’ trip till it 
looks like a circus girl’s skirt with spangles — 
an’ I could a’ put on some trimmin’ black as 
crape easily ’nough.” 


A Prospecting Trip 145 

Jean’s eyes widened with a flash of fear. 

“ What do you mean, Tubby ? ” 

“ Nothin’ — nothin’ at all,” he said quickly. 
“ I was just provin’ that I’m not a— what is it 
— pessimist? ” 

During these days Jean had her first feel- 
ing of homesickness. She would beg Max to 
play his violin for her — then she would sit in 
the corner and cry quietly to herself. Jean 
would have Max play nothing but plaintive 
airs, and at last Tante Elsa forbade the music 
altogether and told her German fairy stories 
instead. Jean liked her to tell them first in 
English, then in German. Tante Elsa tried 
to make her understand what the words 
meant and gave her a German lesson every 
day. 

All Jean’s friends tried to divert her from 
her lonesomeness. The Gold Eagle Man took 
her out to ride ; The Rainbow Lady invited 
her to gay little teas ; Tubby brought Skin 
around to “ waggle his ears ” for her ; Father 
Ambrose brought her a new book and some 


146 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

pictures he had drawn himself ; Beatrice sent 
her a huge box of wonderful yellow roses and 
white violets from California, and little Au- 
relia Quijada made her an engaging family 
out of peanuts. But notwithstanding these 
diversions, the first little note of homesick- 
ness crept into her letters to Payneville. 

“ I know you are walking through the 
maple leaves now which have fallen off the 
trees,” she wrote to Grace Collins, “ and it 
sounds just like crumpling paper in the waste- 
basket. Please send me a red and a yellow 
maple-leaf in your next letter. Father Dick 
has gone on a prospecting trip and I am 
living with Tante Elsa. Her little cakes 
with fruits and raisins in are nice, but she 
makes me eat too many. I have to eat them 
all the time. If you could be here we would 
have a tea-party with them. I would rather 
have it in your attic, though — there by the 
colored window. 

11 Our beautiful tent-home is empty now. 
I didn’t want to leave it, but Father Dick 


A Prospecting Trip 147 

said pioneer people must get used to changing 
around. So I am trying to get used to it, but 
it is hard to do. I thought when Cousin 
Rachel tried to show me how to make tatting 
that it was the hardest thing in the world to 
do — but this is harder. It is like being in a 
moving picture, and it gives me a very un- 
settled kind of a feeling. 

“ I am learning to speak the German lan- 
guage. I can understand Tante Elsa now 
when she says, 1 Jean, dear, will ypu have 
some more bread ? ’ and ‘ Isn’t this a fine day ? ’ 

0 

and ‘ How do you feel this morning? ’ in Ger- 
man. I can say a prayer in German, too, but 
I guess you would think that it sounds very 
spluttery. We had to make a new prayer 
about Father Dick off on his prospecting trip. 

“ The Gold Eagle Man showed me on a 
map he had of the mining camps about where 
Father Dick is. It looks very near Tonopah, 
but it feels as far away as China. When 
Father Dick went away he looked like Sir 
Galahad going on a quest. His eyes were 


148 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

just like the bright boy-knight’s. He didn’t 
have a belt wove in silver thread and crim- 
son in a strange device like Cousin Rachel’s 
old brown book says Sir Galahad wore. 
Father Dick had a leather belt instead and 
his corduroys and high boots took the place 
of Sir Galahad’s white armor. I think Father 
Dick looked nicer. I didn’t have a piece of a 
sleeve ’broidered with pearls to give him to 
wear, so I gave him my blue hair ribbon. He 
said no knight ever had a lovelier lady’s 
favor and he wound it round his sombrero 
hat which he wore instead of a helmet. 

“ I didn’t think about Payneville much 
when I first came here, but I do now since 
Father Dick’s away. Do you ever sail my 
boats that I left for you ? There are no 
brooks here to sail boats on. The water comes 
from a far place in pipes. A man brings the 
best kind to drink around in barrels. He 
gets it from a spring which is also a long way 
off. We have to pay for the water we drink. 
What do you think of that? It makes me 


*49 


A Prospecting Trip 

feel very extravagant, like drinking soda- 
water. I guess I could buy me a velvet dress 
with the valuable water I've drunk since I’ve 
been here, for I’m so thirsty all the time. 
They sell cream in cans like canned tomatoes 
and corn. It says Carnation Cream on the 
cans in red letters. 

“ A little yellowish brown bird flew in the 
door to-day and I caught it — it was very tired 
and hot and didn’t care at first, but when it 
had had some water it wanted to go away so 
I let it fly again.. It was a kind of a canary, 
Father Ambrose said, but it wasn’t the kind 
to put in a cage. Father Ambrose said, ‘ Isn’t 
it a curious thing how birds follow civiliza- 

4 

tion to a desert place like this ? ’ I wish you 
would give Muff some pepper-grass. There 
is some in the attic I put to dry for him. 
Aunt Elizabeth will forget to give him some 
every day. She thinks he doesn’t need it. I 
dreamed last night that he was dead in the 
bottom of his cage with his little head against 
the water-cup, which was empty. 


150 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ When I think of Payneville I feel a good 
deal like Pietro when he thinks of Italy — he 
wants to fly and be there all in a minute. 
But I forgot I haven’t told you who Pietro 
is. Way in the night one night there was an 
Italian man played a harp on our corner in 
the moonlight. It sounded like water-ripples, 
— like baby winds in green leaves, — and like 
the music little buds make when they first 
come out and spread their pretty colors. I 
lay just as still and listened and thought of 
Father Dick. Onkel Max jumped out of bed 
and dressed himself and went out to see who 
it was. There’s no one in Tonopah who can 
play a harp, and Onkel Max wants one, so it 
can play what he calls the rainbow motif in 
his Wagner orchestra which he is going to 
have some time when he gets enough violins. 
He says the harp can shimmer colors just like 
a rainbow. And what do you think ? Onkel 
Max talked to the man in the night and got 
him to stay here in this town. His name is 
Pietro, and he has always just wandered 


A Prospecting Trip 151 

round. Father Ambrose says he has the 
Romany spirit. Onkel Max got him to set 
up a fruit-store and we bring him customers. 
His eyes are very black and restless and all 
the time he is putting money in the bank. I 
think he is saving it to go back to Italy, be- 
cause he talks about it all the time. He tells 
me about Italy and I tell him about Payne- 
ville. I don’t tell Onkel Max that Pietro 
wants to go away because Onkel Max would 
feel so sad. He has such a hard time to keep 
his orchestra together and he wants to have 
his Wagner orchestra more than anything in 
the world and Pietro must be in it. Tante 
Elsa cans all the fruit Pietro can’t sell. It is 
good, but the taste of it isn’t like the put-up 
fruit from our garden in Payneville — espe- 
cially the peaches with cloves stuck into 
them.” 

“ You’ve got the crib-bite,” said The Gold 
Eagle Man one day. 

“The crib-bite?” cried Jean jumping off 


ip A Little Princess of Tonopah 

her stool and twisting her neck to look at 
herself in the little mirror above the counter. 
“ Whatever is the crib-bite ? ” 

“ When a horse stands too long in his stall 
he gets the crib-bite. He has to be taken out 
so he can stretch his legs. Get that Mexican 
hat of yours and come along with me.” 

He took her to one of his mines. He in- 
troduced her to the foreman, who treated The 
Gold Eagle Man as if he had a crown on his 
head. Then down, down into the earth they 
went and Jean saw how they got the gold out 
of the mines. The torches, the narrow pas- 
sages, the queer damp odors, the grimy faces 
of the workingmen, the glint of the metal 
here and there, the noise of the double- 
handled hammers and single-jacks, all com- 
bined to give Jean the feeling that she was in 
some uncanny realm. Some of the men she 
thought had a look in their eyes of the Nibel- 
ung-hate, which Tante Elsa had told her 
about, — especially when they flung the ore to 
be hoisted above. 


*53 


A Prospecting Trip 

“ It is too bad when they work so hard to 
get the gold out that they can’t have any of 
it,” said Jean. 

“ You’re a little anarchist,” laughed The 
Gold Eagle Man. 

She liked it better above in a little room 
where a thin cheery young man was melting 
gold in little crucibles. 

“ It looks like gold quicksilver,” said Jean, 
fascinated at the sight of it. 

“ It controls the thermometer of people’s 

* 

feelings instead of the weather like a quick- 
silver thermometer,” said the young man as 
he poured out the melted gold. 

The Gold Eagle Man knew when Jean 
was tired before she knew it herself and very 
soon suggested something new. He grew to 
keep a very close finger upon the pulse of 
Jean’s wavering capricious interest during 
these days, and more than any one else, he 
anticipated her restless moods and planned to 
dispel them. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE DESERT GUARD 

One morning very early The Gold Eagle 
Man was called to the telephone. It was 
Jean’s voice. 

“ Something has happened to Father Dick ” 
— her voice caught in a little sob. 

“ What is it ? How do you know ? Have 
you heard from him ? ” asked The Gold Eagle 
Man, rubbing his eyes. 

“ Yes — in the night something woke me up 
and told me that something was wrong with 
him. I know it was Father Dick calling me 
to come.” 

“ Oh, nonsense — you just had a bad dream, 
Jean. Go back to bed an’ get your nap out ; 
it’s not time to get up yet.” 

“ Oh, no, no, no — I can’t go back to bed. I 

didn’t sleep all night. I must go to Father 

154 


The Desert Guard 


i55 


Dick. I must go to find him, for something 
is the matter. I know something has hap- 
pened to him. Perhaps — perhaps the Thing 
has got him.” 

“ Nothing’s wrong, Jean, it’s all your im- 
agination. But wait a few minutes, and I’ll 
be round to see you.” 

Tean hung up the receiver and waited with 
a very white face for The Gold Eagle Man to 
come. 

He came very soon, expecting to drive 
away the memory of her “ bad dream ” by a 
little gay jesting. But the smiles would not 
come to Jean’s quivering lips. 

She was inconsolable. He could not dispel 
her fears. Her presentiment that something 
was wrong could not be shaken off. She had 
nothing tangible to base her fears upon, except 
that it was a few days past the time for Father 
Dick to return and nothing had been heard 
from him. But such a thing might easily 
happen, The Gold Eagle Man told her. He 
and his party were well equipped for the trip. 


156 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Nothing was likely to be wrong. It was 
not like it had been in the first camp days. 
There was not at all the same danger. 

“ Something has happened — I know — for 
Father Dick called to me.” 

She refused to eat, and all day long she 
begged to go to him. Finally, to comfort her, 
The Gold Eagle Man said that he would send 
some one out after the prospecting party to 
see if all was well. That would not satisfy 
Jean, so he said he would go himself. He 
had anyhow to go almost to the point of their 
prospecting trip on some business for himself. 
He could easily enough get an equipment and 
men at Bullfrog and go on from there. Jean 
clung to her point — she would go along. She 
said she would not be left behind ; and at 
last, The Gold Eagle Man said that he would 
take her. It would not be a hard trip, he as- 
sured Tante Elsa, who was very reluctant to 
let her go. Indeed he said it would be a real 
pleasure trip as far as Bullfrog, at least in the 
automobile. From there they could ride — he 


The Desert Guard 157 

would make every provision for her comfort. 
So it came about that Jean went to help find 
her father. 

The weather was perfect — still, clear golden 
days, the jewel days left over from summer 
which come for a time in early September in 
Nevada. But Jean's spirits did not rise in 
response to the beauty of the weather nor The 
Gold Eagle Man's cheerfulness. 

“ We mustn't be too late — we must hurry," 
was her often repeated cry. 

It was late one afternoon when out on the 
desert The Gold Eagle Man and Jean watched 
the blood fall drop by drop from a burro's 
wounded foot, until there grew a heavy red 
splotch in the gray dust beneath. Still 
hanging from the burro's back were some 
empty water canteens. The burro had a 
peculiar zigzag scar upon it. The men they 
had brought with them recognized the animal 
as one Richard Kingsley had taken from 
Bullfrog. It was the first trace they had 


158 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

found of the party. It was enough to make 
The Gold Eagle Man suddenly and unex- 
pectedly anxious. 

It was not quite dawn of the next day. 
The searching party pressed on very early. 
Jean was growing more and more anxious 
every moment. It was like a vast clear twi- 
light. A few stars still shone. An illimita- 
ble silence held the desert in a waiting 
hush. 

“ The Thing ! ” cried Jean trembling. 

They peered across the gray range of sage 
and sand — starting sometimes toward a Joshua 
tree twisted in outline against the sky like 
the groping form of a man, — or leaning to 
listen as a piece of sunburnt brush fell sud- 
denly against a rock with a sound which 
broke the air like a sharp cry. 

The horizon took on a paneling of coloring. 
The dawn brought all objects into clearer view. 
The shaded gloom lifted. Swiftly, as if limit- 
less draperies were suddenly torn apart, the 


The Desert Guard 


*59 

sunlight came and pierced the desert with 
dazzling shafts of light. 

The Gold Eagle Man pulled his horse to a 
standstill by one of the yuccas which stood 
martial-like in the sandy waste ; he did not 
know where to turn. An unspoken dread 
possessed him — dread of what that tottering, 
sightless desert guard — Thirst — might have 
done for Jean’s father. The ivory-colored 
yucca plumes were unstirred by the faintest 
breeze. The spiked leaves were scarcely 
cooled by the night, for the dryness of heat, 
almost like summer, scorched the desert. 
The Gold Eagle Man picked at the leaves ab- 
sently, wondering where to direct the men 
further in their search. He pushed away the 
indefinable dread impatiently. He called 
himself a fool for being led on by a child’s 
fancy. They were so near to civilization — 
it was not at all likely anything had hap- 
pened. There was not at all the same danger 
as when the country was very new. Perhaps 
the party were already safely back in Tonopah 


i6o A Little Princess of Tonopah 

by another route. It seemed hardly worth 
while to go farther — yet — he looked at Jean’s 
anxious little face, and he could not speak of 
return. 

Suddenly they saw something over near a 
clump of stunted sage. The Gold Eagle Man 
jumped from his horse and his straining eyes 
blurred for a moment in the blinding light. 
When his vision cleared he saw the sham- 
bling figure of what looked to be an old man. 

When The Gold Eagle Man approached, he 
saw the man crouch to the earth, moaning 
and forcing the pebbles, cooled by the night, 
one after the other into his mouth. As The 
Gold Eagle Man came closer he found resem- 
blances in the bent figure which told him that 
their quest was ended. 

Jean was following close behind. 

“ Father Dick ! ” she screamed. 

The Gold Eagle Man held her back. Could 
it really be her father — that shambling, wild- 
looking man ? He was bareheaded. His 
light hair was burned to a tawny sun-scorched 


The Desert Guard 


161 


hue — matted and stiffened into an unkempt 
mass by the sweat of awful days. One look 
at the wildness of his bloodshot eyes told 
The Gold Eagle Man that reason had forsaken 
him in his crazed search for water. His fea- 
tures were drawn and twisted from the an- 
guish of thirst. His lips, cracked and bleed- 
ing, were drawn tensely back from his teeth. 
His scarred feet were bare and swollen. His 
shirt was torn from throat to waist. 

The Gold Eagle Man tried to get Jean to re- 
turn to the searching party. This was not a 
sight for her to see. But she clung to him 
tremblingly and would not go. 

The Gold Eagle Man called his name very 
gently, but he turned upon them sun- blinded 
eyes that were unseeing, and started away 
zigzagging through the brush. The Gold 
Eagle Man moved quickly after him. With 
horror, he saw him kneel, look and listen, 
then start up babbling in a delirium of de- 
light. The Gold Eagle Man knew that he 
had seen the vision of cooling shade, and 


1 62 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

heard the splashing of limpid waters which 
comes at the end to those crazed by thirst. 

Jean gave a piercing cry and darted forward 
as she saw her father leap forward as if in a 
frenzy to cast himself into that heaven of cool 
water. The Gold Eagle Man and Jean caught 
him as he fell. 

When they learned the cause of the tragedy, 
The Gold Eagle Man said that it was an ex- 
perience more like those of the very first camp 
days than anything he had heard about for a 
long time. The three prospectors were stak- 
ing their claims with the feeling that they 
had found something worth while. They 
had unexpected interruption — four men came 
upon them and demanded that they give up 
their claims to them, since they were real 
owners and had staked there long ago. There 
was a dispute— a hot one. The invaders 
were vicious-looking men, with the impress of 
lawless, desperate living upon their faces. 
They were not disposed to ride on. They 


The Desert Guard 163 

agreed “ to sleep over it.” That night when 
the chance came they overcame the prospect- 
ors’ resistance, bound them and made way 
with all their provisions, leaving them with- 
out animals, water or food. When, after a 
long time, Richard Kingsley and his compan- 
ions, loosed their bonds, they started to walk 
back over the long trail by which they had 
come. Exhausted, dazed, without food or 
water, they lost their bearings and became 
separated. They drifted farther and farther 
away from the main roads. So it was that 
the desert guard almost overcame them. 

The others were found later, not so overcome 
by' the experience, as they were men of greater 
endurance. Jean’s father had a hard fight for 
life. It was days afterward, in the Lone Trail 
Hospital at Tonopah, that he first recognized 
her. 


“ And you said The Gold Eagle Man didn’t 
know how to serve,” said Jean to Tubby re- 
proachfully. “ Why, Tubby, he didn’t think 


164 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

of himself once — and he saved Father Dick 
for me. He ought to have a medal made out 
of stars. He is the wonderfullest man in the 
world, next to Father Dick.” 

Tubby poked his heel stubbornly in the 
sand. 

“ Well — jes’ the same it was his kinder- 
garten lesson in servin’. I bet he wouldn’t a 
done it fer any one but you. An’ that’s a 
selfish kind of servin’.” 


CHAPTER X 


SETTLING DOWN 

“ Why don’t you come to play on the sand- 
pile any more, Jean ? ” asked Beatrice, appear- 
ing one day as Jean was industriously making 
“ divinity ” fudge in the back of Elsa’s shop. 

“ I am helping Father Dick,” said Jean, as 
she carefully measured a cup of corn syrup 
and poured it into a pan with two cups of 
sugar. 

“ I don’t see how you can help him by 
making fudge to eat.” 

“ I don’t eat it — I make it to sell and make 

money. I’ve made three dollars’ worth of 

fudge this week. I just can’t keep enough 

made for Tubby and Skin and Cop, they eat it 

so fast. Father Ambrose likes it too, but he 

hardly ever gets here in time to get any — 

neither does The Gold Eagle Man. If you 

want to vou can watch this boil while I beat 

165 


i66 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

the whites of these two eggs. When bubbles 
come up like little bells you tell me.” 

Beatrice stationed herself to watch the 
mixture boil, while Jean beat the eggs until 
her arm was so tired that it fell with a little 
thump on the table when she stopped. 

“ There, the froth is so stiff I can turn it 
upside down and it will not fall out of the 
bowl,” said Jean triumphantly. 

“ It must be very hard work,” sympathized 
Beatrice. “ I should think you’d rather have 
a father who is rich like mine, so you 
wouldn’t have to help him earn money — I 
shouldn’t like to have my father just a bank 
cashier like yours.” 

“ I like it — it is nice because I can help. 
You wouldn’t like it because you can’t do 
things. Father Dick doesn’t know I’m help- 
ing him earn money yet. I’m going to wait 
and s’prise him when I get fifty dollars 
made.” 

“ Fifty dollars ! ” exclaimed Beatrice. 
“ Why, you would have to make enough 


Settling Down 167 

fudge for a whole regiment of telegraph boys 
to get that much, wouldn’t you? ” 

“ I don’t know. I can’t do mental ’rith- 
metic — except when I sit very still. I only 
know my fudge sells as fast as I can make it. 
Besides, I do other things. I try all sorts of 
things and s’prise myself all the time. I find 
out so much that I can do. Tante Elsa showed 
me how to knit wrist-warmers, and when I 
get them done, Tubby is going to auction 
them off at the Palace. Maybe after a while 
I can make mittens. Then I have a pupil.” 
“A pupil?” 

“ Yes, and he is a grown man — Giacino 
Bandinelli is his name. He is an Italian who 
works in the mines. He knows Pietro and 
buys fruit of him. They talk all the time 
about Italia in their own language. Giacino 
speaks English hardly at all, and I’m teach- 
ing him how. I got acquainted wbth him 
when he came in to buy Tante Elsa’s cakes. 
He comes every day in the afternoon when 
he wakes up — he has to sleep in the daytime, 


168 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

for he works at night. That's why he is so 
pale. Sometimes it is very hard to tell him 
what a word means, then sometimes he is very 
quick. Yesterday I tried to tell him what 
monotonous means. It is a very long word 
and I don’t s’pose you know what it means 
yourself. But I have known for a long 
time, because Father Dick used to say it so 
much about Payneville when we lived there. 
I told Giacino that it meant when a thing is 
the same all the time. He said, ‘ Oh, like 
every day the sun get up in east and tumble 
down in west ? ’ He says he wishes the sun 
would sometimes do different things — caper 
about and rise in the north or skip to bed in 
the south. I have never thought of that 
before, have you ? But now I think it would 
be nice, too. He says Italians don’t like 
monotonous things. They like bright chang- 
ing things — that’s why he is so sad, for he 
finds working in the mines very monotonous 
and dark. It is like being out of the world, 
he says. 


Settling Down 169 

“ He used to work in a vineyard out in the 
country in Italy. He says nothing in the 
world smells so sweet as their Italian grape- 
bloom. But he has never smelled the white 
lilacs or the sweet peas or the carnations in 
my garden at Payneville. He came away 
from working in the vineyard because it was 
monotonous, he said, and he didn’t make 
enough money to spend on feast days. He 
heard that here things were different all the 
time and that he could get rich. 

“ So he came. But it isn’t like he thought. 
It is monotonous here too in the mines, like 
in the vineyards, and he doesn’t get rich. He 
thinks he will go back to Italy as soon as he 
earns enough money, but I tell him as soon 
as he learns our beautiful language everything 
will be bright for him and he can really get 
rich. I think he can if he wants to enough. 
Onkel Max is going to get him a change to 
day shift so he can play in his orchestra. 
Giacino can play the violin. 

“ Now it is time to stir the boiled part into 


170 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

the froth. There are the little bells bobbing 
up. You can pour it in for me while I beat.” 
Beatrice very obediently poured the syrupy 
mixture and watched it thicken into a creamy 
mass under Jean’s energetic beating. Then 
Jean put spoonfuls of the fudge upon a huge 
platter. 

“ Now, I’ll put a piece of candied cherry on 
top of each piece and it will be done.” 

“ You have made me work very hard,” 
remarked Beatrice virtuously as she munched 
a “ sample ” piece. “ But I guess it was 
worth it — if I hadn’t worked you wouldn’t 
have given me any fudge.” 

“ My father says it’s always worth it when 
a body works hard. I like to work hard. It 
keeps me from thinking about Payneville too 
much and from wanting to go back. I wish 
I had as many hands as a centipede, so I could 
do all the things I want to do.” 

“ Are you always going to live here ? ” asked 
Beatrice looking about the little rooms. 

“ As long as Tante Elsa will let us. She 


Settling Down .171 

fixed another room by mine for Father Dick, 
and it is beautiful. I have his slippers and 
his paper ready for him at night. It is just 
as homey as it can be. We are settling down, 
Father Dick says, like all pioneers do. We 
don’t eat at Charley’s Inn any more — Tante 
Elsa lets us eat here. The things she cooks 
are better.” 

Each day Jean was busier “ helping Father 
Dick earn money.” After his convalescence, 
Father Dick had soberly counted the money 
he had left, and then taken a position which 
was offered him in a bank. That seemed the 
only way to meet the problem of daily living. 
Going back to the hemming in of four walls 
and the grind of a routine was galling to his 
newly freed spirit, but he accepted the situa- 
tion with what grace he could. If he felt 
baffled by the settled, jogging aspect which life 
took on again for him, he did not give any 
sign of his feeling. 

He seemed to forget his terrible desert ex- 


172 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

perience as soon as his convalescence was 
over. When he put off his “ sick-dress ” — as 
Jean called his dressing-gown — for his work- 
aday clothes again, he apparently threw off 
the thought of his “ hard luck.’’ He never 
allowed Jean to speak of it. At first Jean 
awakened every night and lived over with 
vivid horror that dawn when they found 
Father Dick, but the fast crowding events 
soon began to blur her thought of it. The 
quiet home-life they were beginning to live 
soon made the experience seem far away like 
some dark disturbing fantasy which had come 
and gone quickly. 

One day Jean paused on Main Street in 
front of a big blackboard. On it were all 
sorts of names with figures after them — Lone 
Star $1.12, Black Crow .97i, Lily of the 
Valley .47, and many others. Jean knew 
what it was. Tubby had told her. It was to 
tell how much the different kinds of mining 
stock cost. People could buy any kind they 


Settling Down 173 

liked. Sometimes what they bought would 
next day be worth twice as much. Then they 
hurried and sold it before it was time for 
another kind to have a turn at going up. 

Jean read through the list of mining stock 
quotations with much interest and fingered 
the purse in her pocket, which was fat with 
the small change of fudge receipts. Some of 
the names were very queer — like Jumping 
Frog and Yellow Jack. Only a few were 
pretty — like Silver Crescent, Peacock Feather, 
Lady’s Slipper and Red-bud. 

“ Red-bud — I like that the best,” she said 
to herself. “ Besides, it is cheaper than lots 
of them.” 

Then she pushed open the heavy door be- 
side the blackboard and walked in. The 
room was empty looking, with nothing but 
desks and counters and samples of ore. Back 
in the room, through a cloud of cigar smoke, 
she could see the brims of several men’s hats. 
One looked like The Gold Eagle Man’s gray 
one. She hoped that it was not — for she 


174 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

didn’t want The Gold Eagle Man to see 
her. 

“ Where are your shelves with the things 
on to sell ? ” asked Jean of the large, affable 
man who got up from his desk and came up 
to her. 

“ We just have samples of the things we 
sell,” he answered pulling at his short mous- 
tache to hide a smile. He waved his hand, — 
which Jean noticed had a very large diamond 
ring upon it, — toward some sparkling ore 
specimens near them on the counter. 

“ This one is very pretty,’’ said Jean, pick- 
ing up a piece of rose-silver ore. “ It looks 
like splatters of rose-dew in the sun.” 

“ It’s a sample from the Keystone mine.” 

“ That’s not a nice name for it at all,” said 
Jean, keeping an eye upon the gray hat, 
which she was relieved to see did not turn 
around. 

“ What would you call it? ” asked the man, 
laughing as he tippety-tap-tapped on the 
shining counter with his beringed hand. 


Settling Down 175 

“ I think it ought to be called Queen Mab 
— it makes me think of her. I think I’ll buy 
two dollars’ worth, please.” 

“ Keystone is up to $2.95 to-day,” said the 
man. 

“ Oh, is it so much as that? I will get 
Red-bud then — it is only twenty cents. What 
does it look like ? ” 

The man pushed a very dull looking piece 
of ore toward her. 

“ It isn’t very nice, is it? ” said Jean disap- 
pointedly. “ It has hardly any speckles on it 
to make it shine.” 

“ But the speckles it has are good gold,” 
remarked the man, raising a quizzical eye- 
brow. “ It’s, a good investment. But let me 
give you a tip — you’d better get Yellow Jack 
instead — it’s only thirty cents and it’s going 
up fast.” 

“ No,” said Jean firmly, “Yellow Jack 
sounds like a ruffian. I would rather have 
Red-bud.” 

The man laughed again and wrote on a 


i7 6 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

piece of paper, which he handed to her and 
explained that it was a certificate for ten 
shares of Red-bud mining stock. 

Jean tucked the' piece of paper in her 
pocket and went out, with a backward glance 
at the gray hat, which was still immovable. 

She felt very important and “ jumpy in- 
side ” when she realized that she was “ dab- 
bling in mining stock ” like a grown-up 
person. She wondered if it made Tubby feel 
so queer. He had some of ever so many 
different kinds of mining stock — “ reg’lar 
bouquet,” he called it. Jean thought it was 
nicer to have a bouquet of all of one kind, as 
she told him afterward when she confided 
her secret to him. 

“ I’m not going to tell any one but you, 
Tubby — until Red-bud jumps. I am going 
down every day so as to keep track of it.” 

Tubby was not very enthusiastic over her 
choice of stock. 

“ Red-bud’s been standin’ still for two 
months, Little Princess,” he said ; “ stock-still 


Settling Down 177 

— so I guess you needn’t spend much time 
watchin’ to see it move.” 

“ Oh, I guess it will move pretty soon — and 
if it’s .rested so long it can take a big high 
jump,” said Jean hopefully. 

“ Humph — it’s more’n likely to fall over 
backward an’ go down half,” said Tubby 
shaking his head dubiously. 

“ Oh, Tubby, you surely are a pessimist,” 
cried Jean. “ I think my Red-bud is the 
very nicest mine in Nevada, and I know it 
will behave all right. I expect it is getting 
ready to jump over the heads of everything 
else.” 

“ It’ll never get over the head of Fighting 
Mohawk — that’s my prize. I bought it at 
four cents and now it’s up to forty-nine an’ 
goin’ higher. Now if you’d jes’ a bought 
Fighting Mohawk.” 

“ I wouldn’t have it, a mine with an Indian 
name, Tubby — I know it will be sure to do 
something very bad, like stabbing you in the 
back. Why don’t you get rid of it and buy 


178 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Red-bud ? Red-bud’s the nicest, Red-bud’s 
the nicest, nicest, nicest,” sang Jean to a gay 
little tune of her own, catching hold of Tubby 
and whirling him round and round with her 
until he puffed for mercy. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE CHINESE IDOL 

When The Rainbow Lady’s sister and her 
little boy Timkin came to visit her, Jean was 
The Rainbow Lady’s “ helper ” in the after- 
noons because Timkin had to be amused and 
watched all the time. He often ran away. 
He had a very wide acquaintance before he 
had been there two days. Sometimes The 
Rainbow Lady and her sister dressed them- 
selves in pretty clothes and went out to teas. 
Then Jean was glad when Timkin took a long 
nap, for often when his mother was gone, he 
took unaccountable desires and Jean some- 
times found it hard to manage him. 

One afternoon The Rainbow Lady and 
Timkin’s mother went away while Timkin 
was still asleep. Jean wandered through the 
rooms looking at The Rainbow Lady’s treas- 
ures. She paused by her dressing-table, which 

179 


180 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

always seemed so wonderful with its cut-glass 
bottles and shining toilet articles. There was 
one tall bottle that had violet perfume in it. 
She had often longed to have some of it on 
her dress — but The Rainbow Lady had never 
thought to give her any. Jean lifted the 
bottle carefully and pulled out the stopper. 
She took luxurious smells — it was delicious. 
Jean loved to smell fragrant things. She 
would rather smell strawberries than to eat 
them and half her pleasure in flowers was in 
their fragrance. As her father said, she took 
more pleasure than most people by way of her 
nose. Sweet — oh, how sweet it was ! Jean 
closed her eyes and saw banks and banks of 
violets. She took the damp stopper and 
trailed it across her cheeks. Then she tilted 
the bottle and made her handkerchief and 
dress generously damp in numerous spots with 
the perfume. 

A sudden sound at the window made her 
start guiltily. She looked around quickly — 
she thought she saw a figure dart away ; she 


The Chinese Idol 181 

listened — no, it was just the wind, she thought. 
But the shock was enough to make her realize 
what she had done. She had stolen The 
Rainbow Lady’s perfume ! 

She slipped out of the room with a shamed 
face and a heavy conscience. She went into 
the library where it was still and dim. She 
sat down miserably in a big leather chair in a 
dark corner behind a screen. She held the 
scented handkerchief quietly to her nose. 
How could it still smell so good to her and be 
so sweet? How could she ever tell The Rain- 
bow Lady ? Jean felt that she never could tell. 

Suddenly Timkin made his appearance in 
the room. He walked stealthily, with an air 
which made Jean stay in her corner to see 
what he was going to do. He held the ends 
of his stiff blouse fearfully, as if he feared the 
breeze which was rioting through the room 
would take unseemly liberties and flutter his 
clothes about. Timkin did not look around 
— he went straight to the big table where the 
Chinese idol squatted impressively. 


182 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Timkin gazed for a moment at the puffy 
eyelids, opened scarcely the fraction of an 
inch, the sleek, shiny cheeks, the distorted, 
grinning mouth, and the fat thumbs poised 
together as if meaning in an instant to twirl 
themselves. He stood irresolute. Then he 
rose on his tiptoes and grasped the Chinese 
idol firmly to drag it from the table. 

A whisper from the window held Jean 
spellbound behind her screen. There ap- 
peared the edge of a familiar cap — and finally 
Tubby’s face ! 

Amazed, Jean peeked carefully through 
the crack of the screen. 

“ Thought you was never cornin’ out with 
’im,” she heard Tubby whisper. “ Come 
along — hurry up. Where’s their idol ? Trot 
’im down to the Palace. The worshippers er 
gettin’ tired of nothin’ to worship. The 
peanuts are all gone and every one’s goin’ 
home if yer so slow. You promised — what’s 
wrong ? ” 

“ Nothin’,” responded Timkin feebly. 


The Chinese Idol 


183 


“ You’re ’fraid,” said Tubby. 

Timkin was speechless. This was a crisis. 
He started again toward the table. His shoes 
squeaked and he stopped. 

“ Take ’em off,” suggested Tubby. 

Timkin sat down on the fur rug and 
slipped off his shoes and stockings. He had 
difficulty with the buttons. When he stood 
up, the fur of the rug tickled his legs 
and he hopped on the carpet in a twink- 
ling. 

Tubby snickered. Then Timkin again 
walked boldly to the Chinese idol. Tubby 
cautiously crawled in the low window. 

“ Say, he’s great, ain’t he ? He’s got eyes 
like a preacher I saw onct. He’ll do — let’s 
have ’im in a hurry.” 

Timkin took hold of the Chinese idol’s 
shoulders and pulled him forward. There 
was no doubt in Timkin’s mind but that the 
Chinese idol blinked at him. There was a 
crash — and together Timkin and the idol fell 
to the floor. 


184 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

The spell which held Jean was broken — 
she dashed from her corner. 

“ Timkin — Timkin ! ” she cried trying to 
extricate him from the tangle of the table 
cover and the debris of the Chinese idol. 

“ Oh, go ’way,” said Timkin in a disgusted 
tone. 

“ Get right up, Timkin, you bad, bad boy — 
you’ve smashed the Chinese idol.” 

“ I don’ care,” responded Timkin, wrig- 
gling his toes about in the table cover. 

Jean turned to Tubby who stood gazing at 
the tragedy as one in a dream. 

“ Tubby ! ” she exclaimed, her voice full of 
reproach. “ Oh, Tubby ! ” 

Tubby’s face grew crimson and he breathed 
heavily. They looked at each other in inter- 
rogating silence. 

“ I’ll have to tell, Tubby — I’ll have to tell.” 

Tubby stood stolidly regarding her for a 
moment. Then his face suddenly changed. 
He drew nearer and grabbed her handker- 
chief. 


The Chinese Idol 


185 

He gave it a defiant and expressive sniff. 
He had seen her through the window at The 
Rainbow Lady’s dressing-table, where he sup- 
posed she still was when he hurried Timkin 
— Timkin who was not asleep — to get the 
Chinese idol. 

He looked at her insinuatingly. 

“ Who stole The Rainbow Lady’s vi’let 
Turnery ? ” 

Jean’s eyes fell under Tubby’s challenging 
gaze. 

Timkin watched them warily. Slowly he 
arose. He felt the bump on his forehead. 
Victimized — wounded — deserted. A great 
wave of self-pity stole over him. He would 
be punished. He would be shut off by him- 
self. Mother would not rock him to sleep — 
he could not burrow his nose in the fragrant 
laces at her throat and drift deliciously away 
to the Sandman’s garden where gorgeous and 
impossible flowers were always waiting to be 
picked. 

Fluff, the Angora kitten, bounded in at that 


i86 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

moment and diverted Timkin somewhat by 
draping itself caressingly about his leg. Then 
it began to play frantically about in the ruins. 

“ Timkin ! ” 

It was Jean’s voice with a new tone in it. 
There was a note of inspiration in it as she 
watched Fluff’s movements. 

Timkin looked at her hopefully. 

“ Timkin, we’ll not tell,” she said slowly, 
without looking at Tubby. “ We — we will 
play that Fluff did it.” 

They shut the Angora kitten in the library 
to play at will among the incriminating 
debris of the Chinese idol. Jean went away 
as soon as The Rainbow Lady returned, before 
the Chinese idol was discovered. She did 
not kiss her good-bye lest she should smell 
the perfume, which, though Jean did not know 
it, The Rainbow Lady’s sensitive little nose 
had caught as soon as she entered the 
room. 

Jean went home with her conscience bur- 
dened with triple guilt — Tubby’s, which she 


The Chinese Idol 


187 

should have helped him face, Timkin’s, which 
she had pushed upon him, and her own, 
which grew more and more debasing every 
moment. For the first time in her life Jean 
lost her self-respect. Never before had she 
taken anything that was not hers. Now she 
had stolen — and from The Rainbow Lady ! 

Before the sun set she walked slowly to 
The Rainbow Lady’s house again. Half-way 
there she met Tubby. They stopped and 
looked at each other intuitively. 

“ Where are you going, Tubby ? ” asked 
Jean superfluously. 

“ Where you are, I guess,” he answered 
bravely. “ I’ve sold my Fighting Mohawk — 
an’ I’m goin’ to buy another Chinese idol 
twict as big as the one we smashed. If 
they’re in a hurry for it, I can telegrap’.” 

He produced a well-filled pocketbook. 

“ ’Tisn’t the Chinese idol that’s broken — or 
the violet perfume that’s gone — that isn’t the 
worst part, Tubby.” 

“No, that’s not the worst part,” agreed 


188 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Tabby soberly as they stood together on The 
Rainbow Lady’s steps and rang the bell. 

The Rainbow Lady came to meet them with 
a little rush of gladness. 

“ Oh, I knew you both would come back ; 
Little Princess, I knew it,” she cried holding 
out her arms to Jean. “ I am glad — so glad.” 

She held Jean silently for a moment and 
put out her hand to Tubby, who was stand- 
ing mutely aside. 

“ Oh, if you hadn’t come back, if you 
hadn’t,” she said to them with tears in her 
eyes. “ It doesn’t matter at all about the 
Chinese idol, for I always hated it — it was 
a wedding present from a collector uncle of 
mine — and as for the perfume — I never use it. 
That too is an unappreciated gift.” 

They both stared at her with wide eyes. 

“ How did you know ? ” gasped Jean. 

The Rainbow Lady laughed and held up 
Jean’s little blue bordered handkerchief, still 
redolent of perfume, and Tubby’s telegraph 
signature book which they dropped in their 


The Chinese Idol 


189 

excitement. She had found them by the shat- 
tered Chinese idol. 

“ It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to put 
things together.” 

“ Didn’t you see the kitten ? ” queried 
Tubby. 

“The kitten jumped out the window and 
Timkin insisted upon putting Fluff back in 
the room — before we found the idol — and 
afterward we easily guessed why he wanted to 
shut Fluff there. But you have come back 
and nothing else matters. I wouldn’t have 
lost faith in you for anything in the world.” 

Jean looked at Tubby — then back at The 
Rainbow Lady. 

“ Oh, what if we hadn’t come back?” she 
cried, throwing her arms about The Rainbow 
Lady in passionate relief and remorse. 


CHAPTER XII 


A PEDOMETER CLUB 

“Jean, why are you walking about the 
house so much?” asked Mr. Kingsley one 
evening, looking up from his newspaper at 
Jean, who had been taking firm strides about 
the room for a long time. 

“ I am making my pedometer go. I wasn’t 
going to show it to you until it said I’d walked 
five miles, but I will show it anyhow,” an- 
swered Jean, extricating a pedometer from her 
belt and exhibiting it proudly to her father. 
“ Tubby gave it to me because he’s tired of it. 
He got it because one day he said to Skin, 
* I’ll bet I walk ten miles every day,’ and Skin 
said, ‘ I’ll bet you don’t,’ and Tubby said, ‘ I 
know I do, I’ll prove it,’ and Skin said, ‘ You 
can’t prove it,’ and Tubby said, ‘ I can too,’ so 

he bought this little pedometer machine which 

' 190 


A Pedometer Club 191 

tells how far the one that wears it walks. It 
said twelve miles the first day Tubby wore it 
— he said that he had a lot of telegrams to 
deliver and between times he kept moving 
around as fast as he could. He was so proud 
that night when he showed how much it 
registered to Skin. He wore it a long time 
till he got tired of it and now he has given it 
to me. I’m going to have a pedometer club.” 
“ Oh, Jean, Jean,” laughed Father Dick, 
“ I’m afraid you are a born club woman. You 
are always getting up things and having 
societies.” 

“ But my pedometer club will do lots of 
good,” said Jean earnestly. 

“ That’s a true embryonic club woman’s 
argument.” 

“ What’s em — embryonic, Father Dick ? ” 
“ Just sprouting, like your club.” 

“ Yes, that is like my club — it’s just sprout- 
ing. But it is growing fast. It is going to 
be very nice. The Gold Eagle Man is in it — 
he says he is getting lazy and ought to walk 


192 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

more. Tubby says he will get another pedom- 
eter if I am going to have a club. And you 
will be in it too.” 

“ I haven’t been asked yet.” 

“ Well, I’m just asking you now. You 
must belong because you are getting so pale, 
shut up with the money in the bank all day. 
When I tell you about it you will want to 
belong. Every member has to walk five 
miles a day — any less seems too little when 
you look at the register. It is easy to make 
it say five miles, for each step counts. It’s just 
like ‘ Little drops of water, little grains of sand, 
make a mighty ocean and a pleasant land.’ 
The best thing about the pedometer is that you 
have to walk to make it go. You want to 
walk as soon as you get up and put it on and 
then by the time you’ve walked a quarter of 
a mile up and down a room you get tired of 
the walk and want to go outdoors, where you 
like it so much you don’t want to come in- 
doors again ever. A pedometer gives you a 
new kind of a walk — there is something proud 


A Pedometer Club 


*93 


about it, for you think all the time how im- 
portant each step is. You can tell right away 

the people who haven’t pedometers. They 

✓ 

walk so — so — how do I say they walk when 
they haven’t pedometers, Father Dick ? ” 

“ I guess you’ll have to coin a word, Jean.” 
“ They, they — walk pedometerlessly — there, 
that says it. You will notice right away, and 
it gives you a very s’perior feeling because you 
don’t walk as they do. Then there are so many 
nice things about a pedometer — I don’t sup- 
pose I can tell them all. A pedometer makes 
you want to laugh and sing and skip. I have 
never yet skipped, for I don’t know what it 
would do to my pedometer — but I laugh and 
sing and sometimes people look at me as if 
they thought it odd. But if they had ped- 
ometers they would know that it was not. 
You walk and walk and get to thinking about 
all sorts of things. Walking out with your 
pedometer makes you think new funny 
things. Then if there’s any little jaggedy 
thing that makes you cross before you start 


194 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

out — it goes away after you’ve walked for 
just a little mile — and you don’t care at all.” 
“ You have made a very convincing speech. 
I think I’ll join right away. Especially if it 
makes jaggedy things disappear, for some- 
thing of that sort is irritating me very much 
these days.” 

“ What is it, Father Dick ? ” 

“ My impatience at four walls, Jean, 
when I ought to be glad of their shelter. 
Let’s go buy a pedometer right away.” 

Of the evenings that followed Father Dick 
said that they made him understand what 
Stevenson meant by “ the mild luminous 
evening of the temperate walker.” 

Jean and her father took sunset walks to- 
gether and ate their last meal late, that they 
might be out-of-doors while it was yet light. 
As the shadows closed in and the paths grew 
dim, they came home with a restful indiffer- 
ence to everything except the delicious supper 
Tante Elsa had awaiting them. 

“ We eat much the same things these nights 


A Pedometer Club 


i95 

that we have been eating — but there is 
certainly a difference somewhere/ ’ commented 
Jean’s father. 

“ I think Tante Elsa has stirred the things 
with a magic spoon,” said Jean. 

After supper they read — some book that 
they both loved. 

“ It seems, doesn’t it, Father Dick, as if 
these gentlemen have written just for us?” 
Jean would cry delightedly. 

Between pages they mused and dreamed — 
then a delicious languor would steal over 
them — the book clatter to the floor. Father 
Dick would pick it up and laugh, and they 
would look through a haze at the clock. 

“ Why it’s only nine ! ” Jean would an- 
nounce in sleepy surprise. 

It always took a long time to find the place 
in the book again. They would read only a 
few more lines, then they were off to bed — 
11 that heaven on earth to a weary head.” 

Thus they both learned to live the new life 
with health and strength. Jean grew strong 


19 6 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

and full-lunged and supple. She felt a new 
exhilarating power in her lithe body, and 
grew proudly conscious of the strength of her 
hard little muscles. 

“ Father Dick, I’d like to walk around the 
world with you and my pedometer,” was 
Jean’s frequent appreciative remark. 


CHAPTER XIII 


. SCHOOL 

In November Jean started to the public 
school. Tante Elsa made many objections. 

“ Ach, so many kinds of Kinder. So varie- 
gated ! ” she cried throwing up her hands, 
palms outward, with her characteristic gesture 
when anything was not to her liking. “ And 
our Jean, with her white spirit — among all 
those.” 

“ We will try it for a while — Jean will not 
rub off,” said Father Dick confidently. 

And what he said was true. Jean was 
thrown with all kinds of children, yet she 
turned instinctively from those who sullied 
the play-years of their life. Jean was in- 
tensely interested in all her schoolmates as 
types, so many strange to her. She came 

home with some new comments every day. 

197 


> 


198 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ There’s a little girl with earrings in her 
ears like little hoops and she comes to school 
with a shawl over her head. She gets her 
books very dirty. And there is a boy that 
hasn’t any coat — I think he is cold outdoors 
— he marks his books all over with wheels 
and houses with smoke coming out of the 
chimneys. I like to fix the girl’s hair in 
front of me — she has curls that are almost to 
her waist and she lets me smooth them when 
I get my lessons done. The teacher is very 
worried looking, and doesn’t seem to hear all 
we say when we recite. She has to watch 
Tony Scarrit and the boys who throw paper 
wads and eat candy behind their geographies. 
She never calls on Billie Riley, because he 
never knows his lessons. Little Shiro Naka- 
muro is afraid when he recites — oh, so afraid 
that he gets all pale and trembles. It is be- 
cause some of the class laugh at his mistakes. 
I never do, and I help him get his words 
right. He is very brave and always tries and 
never sits down even when they laugh very 


School 


199 


hard, until he says all that he knows. I 
think our schoolroom is just like a picture 
book. There are so many faces and they are 
all different. Sometimes I think what ani- 
mals they look like. There is one boy like 
a chipmunk, just exactly — and one like a 
sleepy puppy — and one little girl — she is so 
sweet — is like a baby rabbit.” 

This was one of Jean's varied monologues 
on school-life. 

With Jean’s own return to books, a great 
anxiety came to her that Tubby cared so 
little for them. 

“ Tubby, why don’t you go to school? ” she 
asked. 

“ I’d rather earn money,” was his quick 
reply. 

“ But, Tubby, you don’t want to be a 
messenger boy all your life, and how can 
you be anything else unless you learn what is 
inside of books ? ” 

Tubby regarded her questioningly. 

“ Do you think I’m ign’rant? ” 


200 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ No, of course not, Tubby. Your gram- 
mar is not like what it says in my green 
book, but I don't think you’re ignorant. 
Why, you know lots and lots of things 
they don’t teach at school.” 

Tubby nodded with a satisfied air. 

“ An’ how’d I ever learned ’em if I’d gone 
to school ? There’s lots of the most impor- 
tant things that can’t be found inside o’ book 
covers — an’ I’ve learned a lot of ’em.” 

“ But, Tubby, if you aren’t ignorant you’re 
— you’re — I’ll have to ask Father Dick what 
the word is. I’ll tell you to-morrow.” 

The next day she enlightened him. 
“ You’re illiterate, Tubby.” 

“ Gee, that sounds worse than ignorant.” 

“ But it isn’t, Tubby — it means you’re not 
educated — that you don’t know what’s in 
books.” 

“ Well, I don’t see that it matters s’ long as 
a feller knows enough outside of ’em.” 

“ But it does matter, Tubby. Please don’t 
be illiterate any longer. You could go to the 


School 


201 


night-school that’s just started for boys like 
you who work in the daytime.” 

“ An’ miss all the shows ? ” cried Tubby. 
“ Besides, it costs so much. I couldn’t buy 
any more of your, fudge if I went to night- 
school.” 

Wily Tubby ! 

Jean knit her brow. She seemed to be a 
long time earning fifty dollars — something 
was always coming up to keep it a long way 
off. Red-bud was standing still. She had 
grown to depend upon fudge receipts more 
than anything else to swell her fund. And 
yet she didn’t want Tubby to be illiterate. 

“ I don’t care, Tubby. I’d rather have you 
go to night-school. Do, Tubby. Try it.” 

“ Well, maybe — Skin’s talking about goin’, 
an’ if he goes, I’ll go.” 

The next night Tubby plunged into a sea 
of arithmetic problems, bookkeeping ac- 
counts, general history and theme-work, 
which the energetic young woman who had 
started the night-school had planned as 


202 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

practical study for the boys who came to 
her. 

“ I can tell the difference right away / 5 
cried Jean when she saw him again. “ You 
don’t say ain’t and lots of things you used to 
say.” 

“ Aw, g’wan,” answered Tubby blushing 
consciously. “ I don’t b’lieve I talk any dif- 
ferent. I don’t feel natural talkin’ the way 
the teacher says and I don’t know as I’ll do it 
all the time. But I s’pose it’s a good thing to 
know how. The examples she • gives us are 
fine. I took one down to a feller in the office 
that’s twict as old as I am, an’ he couldn’t 
do it at all. I can work ’em fast as lightnin’.” 
“ I know you’ll stop being illiterate in just 
a little while, Tubby.” 

“ Oh, I dunno — maybe. It’s pretty hard. 
I get awful sleepy.” 

“ Don’t eat so much supper, Tubby, then 
you’ll not get so sleepy.” 

“ What’s a feller to do when he’s hungry as 
a bear after runnin’ around all day ? I’m not 


School 


203 


goin’ to starve myself to get educated. I 
don’t know as it’s worth while tryin’ to learn 
anyhow. The books are so awful big. I 
never thought before how much one book can 
have inside of it. .Then those awful ‘ themes.’ 
Whenever it comes time to get down to writin’ 
a theme I want to go right home. The 
teacher’s foolish about makin’ us spell every 
word jes’ right. She tells us to write about 
things we’ve seen an’ done — our observations 
she calls ’em. Gee, I told her it’d make a 
young library, if I should write all mine. I 
like it well enough when I onct get started. 
Last night I wrote about the drillin’ contest 
on Labor Day — when the Arizona man got 
the one thousand dollar prize for the fastes’ 
single handed drillin’. She said she could 
jes’ hear the hammers a-goin’. Themes 
wouldn’t be so bad if ’twasn’t for the spellin’. 
There’s a good show to-morrow night — I guess 
Skin an’ me will go, instead of goin’ to 
school.” 


“ Oh, Tubby ! ” 


204 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Jean’s voice was full of disappointment. 

“ Well, I don’t care, it’s no fun workin’ 
all day and then at night, too. Maybe I’ll 
quit fer good. It’s too hard.” 

“ Oh, Tubby, please don’t get discouraged,” 
cried Jean earnestly. 

“ Well — I dunno. I believe I’djes’ as lief 
be illiterate an’ have a little fun.” 

Tubby went to the show — and to several 
more shows. He stayed away from night- 
school for a week. But he was downcast and 
restless all the while. 

He avoided Jean and appeared to be lost 
in the wild pursuit of pleasure when he was 
not working. 

Finally, he came to Jean and announced 
that he was going back to night-school. 

“ I’m so glad, Tubby,” Jean said clapping 
her hands. “ I just knew you would.” 

“ I didn’t intend to — but somehow I’m not 
satisfied any more bein’ illiterate. I feel like 
I’ve got some disease — I’m goin’ to get rid of 
it as quick as I can.” 



“WHAT IS THE MATTER NOW?” 






School 


205 


Jean developed some new ideas of democracy 
by chance .contact with some pupils of the 
private school on the hill opposite. 

One day she came home and sat on the 
door-step, braiding and unbraiding her hair 
very energetically while she waited for Father 
Dick to come home. 

“ What is the matter now ? ” he asked, pull- 
ing her braids teasingly and looking inquir- 
ingly at her darkening eyes. 

Jean took a long breath and told her story. 

“ When I was coming home from school, 
Georgia Tipton and Agnes Carling were going 
the same way and I said ‘ How-do-you-do ? ’ and 
was going to walk with them, and what do 
you think ? They — they wouldn’t walk with 
me ! They got off to one side and stopped 
and took hold of each other and whispered 
and looked out of the corners of their eyes at 
me. Georgia tossed her head — she had on a 
new hat that looked like a grown-up lady’s — 
and said, ‘ We can’t walk with you ’cause you 
go to public school — we go to Miss Haven’s 


2o 6 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

private school/ and I said, 1 Going to a private 
school doesn’t make you any better than I 
am. Going to different schools doesn’t make 
any difference between people.’ Then Agnes 
pulled her skirts about as if she wasn’t think- 
ing to show her silk underskirt and said, ‘ Oh, 
yes it does, — all the nice girls in town go to 
the private school — and we learn French. 
My mother says public school is horrid — -just 
for the rabble.’ My fingers tingled and 
tingled and my face got hot. 1 ’Tisn’t for the 
rabble,’ I said and just then who should go by 
but Jamie Taggert — you know how dirty and 
ragged and rabble looking he is — and Georgia 
said, 1 There — he goes to public school — I 
wouldn’t sit in the same room with him ! ’ 
And Agnes said, ‘ Neither would I, not for 
anything.’ Then the air danced in little 
waves before my eyes and I said, * I’d rather 
sit in the same room with Jamie Taggert than 
with you. You’re not any better’n he is — 
your fathers are both gamblers ! ’ ” 

“ Jean ! ” exclaimed Father Dick. 


School 


207 


“ Well, they are/’ said Jean going on breath- 
lessly, “ ’cause Tubby said so and they knew 
it was so — they both got red and looked as if 
I hit them. Georgia came close tome, just 
as close as she could and said, 4 You — you — ’ 
between her teeth like that and I knew why, 
and I stood just as still and looked right back 
at her and said, 4 I’m not afraid of you — and 
I’ll not quarrel with you. You can go right 
home.’ Then Agnes said , 4 Come on, Georgia,’ 
and they went off with their arms around 
each other, switching their skirts to make 
them rustle and tossing their heads. When 
they got up on the hill they stopped and 
looked down and laughed and laughed — an 
ugly laugh that said just as plain , 4 Ho, you — 
you little rabble girl, you thought we’d 
walk with you — we, we — with you — ho, you 
poor little rabble girl.’ ” 

Jean came to the end of her story with her 
eyes blazing. 

Her father looked at her quietly. 

44 Well, what are you going to do about it? 


208 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Why not let it roll off like water from a duck’s 
back? You are as good as any one else in the 
whole world. You are as good as kings and 
queens, my Little Princess. Their saying you 
are a little rabble girl doesn’t make you one, 
does it ? ” 

“ But — but — for them to say it — when 
they’re just gamblers’ children.” 

Her father’s hand went very quickly and 
gently over Jean’s mouth. 

“ Jean,” he said sternly, “ if you had been 
born a gambler’s little girl, could you help it ? 
Is it fair to taunt Georgia and Agnes about 
something they can’t help?” 

“ Are fathers like Father Ambrose said re- 
ligion-clothes are ? ” 

“ Very much — only there is less chance to 
change. Fathers are beside our cradles when 
we are born and we haven’t a chance to 
choose. It happens that one little girl finds 
a decent bishop playing with her toes and 
another finds a gambler. One may find a 
father who will make her proud when she 


School 


209 


gets old enough to compare him with other 
fathers — and another will find one who will 
make her ashamed. You see she isn't con- 
sulted about it at all, and people who are fair 
will never let a little girl's father make any 
difference in the way they treat her or what 
they say to her." 

Jean's face grew very hot with shame. 

“ I never will say it again — I never, never 
will, Father Dick," she cried, holding out her 
arms to him. 

He held her very quietly, and after a while 
he kissed her softly on her forehead. Then 
Jean gave a little sigh of content and lifted 
her head to look at him as she sometimes did 
when her love for him swept over her over- 
whelmingly, “ to see if he were real." 

“ I'm glad — I'm glad I found you playing 
with my toes, Father Dick. I'd rather have 
you than any father in the world," she said 
solemnly. 


CHAPTER XIV 


AN ANGEL OF SERVICE 

4 

The days grew shorter and the bleak 
changes of winter came quickly. The golden 
autumn-time was followed by high winds 
and sudden blizzards. With the first snow 
came Christmas thoughts to Jean’s busy head. 

“ I’m going to send a box to Payneville 
with something in it for every one of my 
friends. I expect it will be a very big box.” 

Ideas came fast — and her fingers shaped 
them quickly into gifts. She planned to 
make almost everything herself in order that 
the surprise-fund of money she had so far 
earned might not be diminished too hope- 
lessly below the fifty dollars she was striving 
for. She had a great deal of Christmas shop- 
ping to do — she was always needing a bit of 

ribbon or something to work with. 

210 


211 


An Angel of Service 

One day while she was in one of the low 
ceilinged shops, crowded with all sorts of mer- 
chandise, a heavy storm came up, so she had 
to sit down and wait patiently for the swirl of 
snow and sleet to subside. She sat on a stool 
and watched the storm until the conversation 
of two of the shop-girls caught her attention. 
They had forgotten all about her — she sat so 
still. 

One of them Jean recognized as Skin’s 
sister May. She had evidently just had an 
interview with the manager. Jean soon 
gathered that she had lost her place — that she 
had been discharged for careless work. 

“ I don’t care.” May jerked out the words 
recklessly as she slammed back into order the 
chaos of ribbon on the counter. 

Jean saw May’s companion give a long-dis- 
tance glance at the manager’s back. 

“ You do care, May,” she said, coming 
closer and helping with the ribbons. 
11 What’s the use of saying you don’t? ” 

“ I don’t care, Lou. I don’t like this place 


212 


A Little Princess of Tonopah 

anyhow. What good would it do to care? 
I don’t feel as if I could ever wait on another 
customer. I’ve used up all my ready-made 
smiles — and I couldn’t manufacture one to 
save my life.” 

“ There may be easier places, May, but they 
are hard to get just now. Everything is 
filled up during the holidays. Maybe if 
you’d go back to Mr. Alston and let him 
know a little how it is, he might let you stay 
and give you another trial.” 

“ No, I don’t want to talk to him again — he 
is a regular six-feet-one icicle.” 

“ But, May, maybe you couldn’t get any- 
thing else to do — and you know you’re so 
anxious to keep working until you can have 
the home you’re always talking about for 
your two brothers. You’re not a bit well. 
That’s the reason you ought to stay where 
you are if you can. May — do go talk to the 
manager again.” 

Jean saw May turn to Lou with a curious, 
repressed expression in her face. 


An Angel of Service 213 

“ Do you think I could tell him? What 
would he understand ? ” 

“ They say he was good to Nell Hosmer 
last week when her father got killed in the 
mine.” 

“ He was just playing to the gallery, Lou ; 
every one was looking on then. Nobody 
knows about me. Mine isn’t a lime-light 
story like Nell’s — there’s nobody dying in it.” 
“ There are worse things than dying, May.” 
“ But people like him — they don’t know 
and they don’t care. They have nice comfort- 
able tragedies — if they have them at all — 
tragedies that sit down to big dinners with 
them and make them feel important. We 
behind-the-counter-people aren’t interesting 
enough to make ’em notice us. I went to 
church Sunday to keep warm, and you 
ought to have heard what the minister said — 
like stories out of a fairy-book. He talked 
about angels of service — standing in the light 
— ready to help any one who needed it. He 
said these angels are all around us in modern 


214 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

clothes. I don’t find my path blockaded by 
tailor-made 'angels of service/ ” 

Jean could see the quick tears in May’s 
dark angry eyes as she lifted them and saw 
the sympathy of comradeship in Lou’s face. 
“ Oh, Lou, Lou,” she cried, “ what’s it all for 
anyhow ? ” 

“ Ask the pulpit-gentleman — I don’t know,” 
answered Lou with a weak attempt to laugh. 
“ It’s no wonder you’ve fumbled and not been 
able to work so as to keep your place, after 
Warren was arrested for ore-stealing — all the 
worry of it and all.” 

Jean realized that she was listening to a 
tragedy. She wondered why Tubby had not 
told her about Warren’s arrest. 

“ Hasn’t he — haven’t you had any word at 
all ? ” Lou asked. 

“ No, I haven’t heard a word since the 
first. They won’t let me see him at all. I’m 
just about wild thinking about it. I’m not a 
saint, you know, Lou, but I don’t believe in 
anything crooked, and Warren never did 


An Angel of Service 215 

either. He's worked for that company, too, 
ever since we came here." 

“ Do you — do you think he really stole the 
ore, May ? ” 

“ What's the use of thinking whether he 
did or didn't steal it? He’s Warren — and 
he's in jail. That’s all there is to it. That’s 
enough, isn’t it? If he did steal it — I made 
him do it." 

The pink ribbons in May's fingers fell like 
a lost hope into a box of dull black and Jean 
noticed that her hand shook as she untangled 
the gay bit of color from the other sombre 
ribbons. 

“ What in the world do you mean ? " gasped 
Lou. 

Jean held her breath. It was like a book. 
May went on speaking very rapidly, her voice 
full of what Jean called “ ups and downs of 
feeling." 

“ Well — the Sunday night before — before 
Warren was arrested — we talked about when 
we could have a home of our own, and stop 


216 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

living like castaways. Warren had expected 
a raise sure this month, and we’d begun to 
hope for different things. He told me that he 
hadn’t his raise and wasn’t likely to get it for 
a long time. When he told me that, I broke 
right down and cried. I couldn’t help it — we’d 
been so sure of his getting it — and we’d been 
waiting so long for the dream of having our 
own home to come true, it seemed to me I 
just couldn’t go on waiting. I’ve always tried 
not to show Warren and Skin how hard it 
was for me to wait — I’ve just shut my teeth 
hard. But that night all the shut-up wish- 
ing came out. I went all to pieces about 
things in general. I cried and cried ; Warren 
said it sounded like I was afraid and hurt. 
Warren is used to seeing me laugh when I’m 
with him — because he gets so blue — and my 
crying upset him like everything. 

“ I ought to have thought about him, but 
everything seemed so black, I just couldn’t 
control myself. I never wanted a home so 
much in my life. I hated the Thing that 


An Angel of Service 


217 


kept us from having one — and I hated myself 
for crying out against a Thing so much 
bigger than I that it wouldn’t even hear me.” 

Jean listened very closely — then there were 
different kinds of Things. She remembered 
the desert Thing and shivered. She wondered 
if the Thing which kept people from having 
homes was like that. 

“ I knew it wasn’t any use,” May went on, 
“ but I got started crying and I just couldn’t 
stop. And I said all sorts of terrible things. 
I said that I wanted to die — I said I wasn’t 
well enough to work. I said I hated every 
one in warm houses — the people who don’t 
see, and don’t want to see anything that hasn’t 
rose-color about it. I got to shaking like I 
had a chill. Warren tried to quiet me and 
got me some hot soup to drink. I’ll never 
forget his face as long as I live. Something 
new was written on it — something hard and 
sullen. ‘We will find a way to get a home, 
May,’ he said when he left me to go to bed. 
* We’ll find a way ; you shan’t work any 


218 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

longer/ I called after him — there was some- 
thing in his voice that made me afraid. But 
he didn’t come back — I don’t know whether 
he heard me or not. I couldn’t sleep for 
thinking of his face. Next morning he went 
off early and I didn’t see him — and — you 
know what happened. And since then — oh, 
Lou — not to have one word from him, not 
to know how it is going to turn out, and 
to think that if it’s true, I’m to blame — I tell 
you, Lou, I can’t stand it much longer.” 

“ Oh, May, May,” Lou caught May’s hand 
in passionate sympathy. 

“ Don’t, Lou, don’t. You’re good, but I 
can’t stand it. I don’t want to make a baby 
of myself. I wouldn’t let Mr. Alston see me 
cry for anything in the world.” 

Jean watched May’s even teeth shut 
cruelly upon her quivering lip as the manager, 
looking neither to the right nor the left, 
passed the counter. Both girls looked after 
the swinging figure. 

“ He doesn’t have to wait to get a home, 


An Angel of Service 219 

May/’ remarked Lou. “ He’s going to be 
married this month to a girl from ’Frisco 
who’s visiting here now.” 

May gave a short laugh that made Jean 
shrink — it was so harsh. 

“ Do you suppose he can buy her enough 
diamonds to make things bright for her ? Do 
you suppose if she takes the rest-cure often 
enough, she can stand managing a home ? ” 

“ It’s no use to talk like that, May — it 
doesn’t make things any easier.” 

As Mr. Alston reached the door, it opened 
for a tall, radiant girl whom Jean recognized 
as Miss Marston, a visitor Jean had often 
seen drinking tea at The Rainbow Lady’s 
house. 

Miss Marston laughed at the surprise in 
Mr. Alston’s greeting — he was amazed that 
she should have braved such a storm. 

“ That’s the girl he’s going to marry,” Jean 
heard Lou whisper to May. 

May gave no answer and shrugged her 
shoulders as she turned away. Lou watched 


220 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

the couple with great interest and kept up 
a low-voiced comment. 

“ She’s got on silver fox — she knows how 
to wear her fine things, doesn’t she? I guess 
her tailor must like to make her clothes for 
her. The way Mr. Alston’s smiling at her — 
do turn around and look, May. They’ve 
turned around ; they’re coming toward this 
counter. If it wasn’t for the way you feel, 
May, I’d make you wait on her.” Lou gave 
a little grimace as she straightened her collar 
and went forward to show ribbons to Miss 
Marston. 

Mr. Alston laid his newspaper upon the 
counter and laughingly helped Miss Marston 
make her selections. Jean caught remarks 
about “ mission box ” and “ hurry to get it 
off in time.” 

May, at first self-conscious and embarrassed 
in the presence of the manager, soon regained 
her poise when she saw that he did not even 
look in her direction. Jean saw her look with 
a bitter expression on her face at Miss Mar- 


221 


An Angel of Service 

ston’s furs, the straight lines of her masterfully 
tailored coat, and the glisten of the exquisite 
wing in her hat. 

The evening paper which Mr. Alston had 
pushed away from him lay so near May that 
it was within arm’s length. She looked at it 
idly for a moment — then she gave a start and 
leaned nearer. Jean guessed that she had 
seen Warren’s name. 

She gave a low cry, and unmindful of the 
sudden surprised glances toward her, she 
snatched the paper and read it with parted 
lips and a drawn look of fear upon her face. 
She read with something sledging at her brain. 
The words became a jumble. Warren had 
been tried. A blinding, wavering shadow 
crept upon the page. The paper shook in 
her hands. She steadied herself and put out 
her hand to sweep away the deepening blur 
as she tried to read the verdict. She could 
not see the page. She looked wildly around 
her. * The ribbons flashed in serpentine lines 
of twisting color before her. The counter 


222 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

gave a leaping glimmer, then all circled into 
darkness. Where Mr. Alston stood was a 
wall of black. For a moment May caught 
a brief glimpse of Miss Marston’s red lips. 
Then they too disappeared. And Lou — where 
was Lou? May tried to call out — she was 
going to fall. She clutched at the counter 
but it slipped away from her. The rustle of 
the falling newspaper sounded like the sweep 
of stormy waters that were going to close upon 
her. She swayed — her head struck the sharp 
edge of the counter — and she fell into the en- 
veloping blackness. 

Jean sprang from her seat. She could no 
longer be a spectator. She caught a glimpse 
of a swiftly passing figure in a familiar fur- 
lined coat, unbuttoned as usual — it was The 
Gold Eagle Man. She dashed out and aston- 
ished him by pouncing upon him with a 
strange appeal. 

“ Come and be an angel of service — 
it’s such a good chance,” she cried breath- 
lessly. 


An Angel of Service 223 

“ That's a new role for me, Jean — what do 
you want me to do ? ” 

She explained eagerly and drew The Gold 
Eagle Man into the store, where the excited 
little group was gathered about May, trying 
to find out what was the matter with her. It 
appeared to be nothing more than a swoon, 
and a wound that was not serious on her 
forehead where she had struck the counter. 
When The Gold Eagle Man and Jean assumed 
the responsibility of taking her to the Lone 
Trail Hospital, Mr. Alston looked very much 
relieved. He looked at them inquiringly, but 
asked no questions. It was enough that he 
should not be burdened with the care of her, 
j ust as he was going to tea with Miss 
Marston. 

At the Lone Trail Hospital, May Hudson 
lay for several weeks, unconscious, in her 
fever and delirium, of her surroundings. One 
still day, when the snow without lay in its first 
purity upon the hills, she awoke, herself again. 


224 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

She took a deep breath. Was it an Ameri- 
can Beauty rose that she smelled ? It surely 
could not be — an American Beauty rose cost 
seventy-five cents. Then still unbelieving she 
opened her eyes, which were astonished by the 
warming, embracing red of a bowl full of 
those regal roses upon the table by her bed. 
She started to count them, but counting 
seemed unaccountably hard. She looked 
slowly upward at the soft green of the hos- 
pital ceiling made by the shadows to look 
like a cool wind-stirred pool of water which 
looked vaguely familiar to May. She dimly 
remembered wishing to lave her hot body in 
its merciful coolness. Her fingers slid curi- 
ously along the counterpane. She lifted her 
hand suddenly — where was the place on her 
finger which she had pricked to roughness 
w T hen she made her blue waist? She stared 
at both her hands wonderingly — the skin was 
as soft as if she could afford to use cold cream 
every night. She put one hand slowly to her 
head — but some one caught it before it reached 


An Angel of Service 225 

the bandage. She looked up into the face 
bending over her. 

“ Warren ! ” 

“ May — May — you really know me now ? ” 

There was a song of rejoicing in Warren 
Hudson’s voice as he looked at his sister’s eyes 
and knew that the delirium was all gone. 

May looked at him as one who, long blinded 
by the gray creeping mists, sees at last in clear 
sunlight. After a little silence, the question 
in her eyes vanished and she laughed softly. 

“ Warren, I have had a terrible dream — I 
dreamed that you were arrested for ore-steal- 
ing and that you were in jail.” 

“ It wasn’t a dream, May — I was arrested 
and in jail.” 

“ For ore-stealing ? ” May’s laugh was gone. 

“ Yes — for ore-stealing.” 

May looked at him again in startled ques- 
tioning. Her body grew tense. 

“ Did you steal it ? ” 

“ No, May.” 

May relaxed and shut her eyes. She lay 


226 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

very still for a time. She forgot everything 
else — the strangeness of her unexplained sur- 
roundings, in the gladness of knowing the 
truth. 

She opened her eyes slowly. 

“ Tell me about it, Warren.” 

“ I haven’t time to tell you everything — the 
nurse gave me orders before I came in not to 
talk to you long, so I’ll have to make a long 
story short. There was a lot of evidence 
against me — the son of the boss really stole 
the ore, and he saw to it that the evidence 
was piled up so thick against me that there 
didn’t seem any way of getting out. If it 
hadn’t been for Ned Osborne, ‘ The Gold 
Eagle Man,’ I’d never have got out. He 
took hold of things and helped me through. 
So I got out — but of course there wasn’t any 
going back to my old place, for after the 
boss found out about his son he did not want 
any one around to remind him of the affair. 
But after Ned Osborne looked me up, every- 
thing went my way.” 


An Angel of Service 227 

Then he told her of how The Gold Eagle 
Man and Jean brought her to the hospital, 
where she had been so long without recogniz- 
ing any one in her delirium. He told her 
how The Gold Eagle Man had helped him 
get a new place. 

“ Why, May/’ he exclaimed, “ I didn’t 
know I could earn so much money. I can 
do things I never could do before, and I 

get ” he leaned and whispered the 

amount of his salary as if it were something 
too wonderful to be spoken aloud. “ And 
best of all, May,” he went on exultantly, 
“just as soon as you are well enough, I’m go- 
ing to take you home.” 

“Home, Warren?” May’s voice wavered, 
and the room swam in a golden wonder-mist. 

“ Yes, May, home — our home — yours and 
Skin’s and mine. It’s the little place we’ve 
called ours in fun for so long. It’s all ready 
for you, May. The Gold Eagle Man and the 
little girl Jean have furnished it for you. At 
first I didn’t see how I could let Ned Osborne 


228 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

do so much, but then I soon saw it wouldn't 
be right to the little girl — the way she offered 
for him — to refuse it. You ought to see the 
place, May ! I’ve never seen a place so cozy, 
so just right, before, and I don’t believe you 
have either. There’s a blue rug, that color 
of blue you like — and china with the little 
flower pattern on, the kind you picked out 
in the shop window. Then the pictures — but 
I can’t tell you any more. Wait until you 
see it. Jean goes up every day with some- 
thing new for the place. And The Gold 
Eagle Man — May, he’s a trump ! ” 

The wonder-mist glinted diamonds through 
May’s tears of bewildered joy. 

“ Then after all, Warren,” she cried, 
“ there are angels of service in the world ! ” 

“ Oh, I think making a house is the very 
nicest kind of play there is. Isn’t it the 
beautifullest place you ever saw?” Jean ex- 
claimed one day when she and The Gold 
Eagle Man were adding some finishing 


An Angel of Service ' 229 

touches to the home they had been getting 
ready for May Hudson. “ And don’t you just 
love being a tailor-made angel of service? ” 

“ I don’t know whether I like it or not,” 
replied The Gold Eagle Man dubiously, as he 
helped Jean hang a picture of spring woods 
at the angle she desired. “ It’s a new sensa- 
tion, there’s no doubt about that, and I like 
it that far. But I don’t like bein’ thanked — 
I hate it. And I don’t like to have that man 
Warren always lookin’ at me ’s if I had a 
halo ’round my head.” 

“ I’ll tell him to stop,” said Jean promptly. 
“ I don’t want anything to happen that will 
make you not want to be an angel of service, 
for I think it is the nicest thing in the world 
for you to be. I’m going to be one myself 
when I have enough money, and I’m going 
to try very hard to learn how to be an angel 
of service, so I will be all ready as soon as I 
get the money.” 

“ As if money had anything to do with it, 
Jean ! ” 


230 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ Oh, of course a body could be an ordinary 
angel of service without money — but the very 
rich ones are the nicest, because they can do 
more things for people. If I can ever learn 
how to be one, that is the kind I want to 
be.” 

“ Just as if you didn’t know already ! 
Why — you were born an 1 angel of service ’ — 
and likewise with the faculty of hammerin’ 
some very poor material like me into some- 
thing that’ll pass to the foolish public for one. 
I don’t like that word angel. It doesn’t 
sound earthy enough for me. Why not 
make it servant ? ” 

“ A servant ? ” 

“ Why not ? ” 

“Well,” said Jean reluctantly, “if you’d 
rather — but it’s lovelier to be an angel.” 

“ Maybe so, but it’s no use my hurdling 
clouds with fastened-on wings tryin’ to be 
something I’m not cut out to be. A servant’s 
the job for me-^you can be the angel.” 


CHAPTER XV 


THE GAME’S THE THING 

The triumphant strains of Siegfried’s sword- 
song vibrated in the little shop, and at the far 
end, in the corner spiced sweetest by the cakes, 
Jean sat with Tante Elsa under the spell of 
Max’s violin. 

The sword motif leaped like a glinting 
flame of fire over the deeper tones. They 
heard the hiss as Siegfried poured the treasure 
of the crucible into the mould and thrust it 
into the water. Then came his excited ham- 
mering of the glowing metal upon the anvil, 
— the joyous swing, swing, swing of his 
young arms, and his exultant shouts as he 
wrought his sword into perfect form. Jean 
closed her eyes in delight. She knew what 
the music said — Onkel Max had told her the 
story many times. In fancy she could see 

Siegfried’s every movement. 

231 


232 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Just as Siegfried was brandishing the flash- 
ing weapon aloft, ready to test it by cleaving 
the anvil, an officious little cuckoo fluttered 
forth above Jean’s head and dispelled the 
shining vision by announcing that it was 
eight o’clock. 

“ Orchestra time ! ” cried Max Striven, end- 
ing the music abruptly and hastily putting 
his violin into the case. 

“ Take time for a little coffee before you go, 
Max,” coaxed Tante Elsa, as she helped him 
on with his greatcoat. “ You look tired.” 

“ No, no, I mustn’t be late. We are to 
have two new violins to-night. The new 
mill has brought some men. Soon, Elsa, I’ll 
have my Wagner orchestra.” 

“ Ach, Max ! Such big music.” 

“ At last — at last, Elsa, I believe my dream- 
orchestra is coming true.” 

“ You have worked a long time, Max, you 
have given so much of your strength to it.” 

“ Ach, yes.” 

For a moment the old man’s head dropped 


The Game’s the Thing 233 

and his lips touched the cheek of her who 
understood so well. 

“ You love it so, Max.” 

“ Next to you, Elsa — and the little Jean — I 
love my orchestra.” Then he caught her 
hands joyously. “ Think of it, Elsa — to 
hear my orchestra tell at last of the Rhine- 
daughter’s glee, of the Nibelung-hate, of the 
Valkyr’s fearlessness.” 

“ And of Walhalla ! ” cried Jean dancing 
round them joyously. 

“ And Tannhauser, and Tristan and Isolde,” 
breathed Elsa softly, the quick tears bright- 
ening her eyes. 

“ Yes, yes,” cried Max excitedly, “ all the 
Wagner wonders.” 

Then he fastened his coat quickly and 
pulling on his cap, went out into the wind. 
Jean tapped on the window and held the 
light as she waved to him. 

“ Isn’t it beautiful?” she cried, turning 
back to Tante Elsa. “ His dream-orohestra 
is coming true ! ” 


234 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

He walked as quickly as his rheumatism 
would allow toward the hall where he had 
met his orchestra for so long. He walked 
with a buoyant spirit, for never had the ful- 
fillment of his dream seemed so near. He 
hummed an aria lightly and hugged his 
violin more closely. 

Suddenly, as he neared the corner where 
stood the quaint old “ barrel-house,” which 
he had passed every time on his way to 
orchestra practice, he stopped short. It was 
gone — that old landmark he had grown so 
fond of. 

Some new building enterprise had wiped it 
out. Standing there, and looking all about 
him at the myriad twinkling lights shining 
through the early darkness, he became con- 
scious of the big newness of the town. He 
felt himself the embodiment of the old. 

He went on slowly, his head lowered and 
his limp more labored. He did not realize 
until he stood at the door and heard the buzz 
of all the men’s voices through the half-closed 


The Game’s the Thing 235 

entrance that, for the first time, he was late 
to his orchestra practice. He looked at his 
watch helplessly. As he started to push open 
the door, the words of his men made him 
stop short, as if from a blow in the face. 
Some of his oldest and best musicians were 
speaking. 

“ He says Max has taken us as far as he 
can — that he’s too old to train us right. We 
need a new leader with new methods.” 

“ Yes, and the fellow ought to know what 
he’s talking about ; he’s fresh from New 
York.” 

“ He says we’ve got it in us to do wonders 
if we just had some one to tell us how better 
than Max can do it. Max only knows what 
he’s taught himself. This man says he can 
get us a professional leader — he knows some 
one that’s coming here soon to do things in 
music.” 

“ He’s the man for us.” 

Max leaned against the wall ; the voices 
made a blur of sound. His orchestra wanted 


236 A Little Princess of Tonopah 


him no more — his shining dream seemed 
suddenly touched by something that shriveled 
and blackened it. 

After a time he straightened himself sud- 
denly. He lifted his shoulders in soldierly 
fashion. He pushed open the door and 
entered with a courageous semblance of his 
old-time comradeship. He went to his place 
and the men took up their instruments. 
Max was not unconscious of the reprimand 
in many glances turned upon those who had 
been speaking. He understood the loyalty, 
but it did not move him. 

“ Boys,” he said, chaining his emotion, 
“ I’ve come to tell you to-night that I can’t lead 
you any more. I’m getting too old — my rheu- 
matism’s too bad — you must get some one else.” 

Max was a long time getting home to his 
one solace — his Elsa and Jean. 

From that night, Max’s violin lay un- 
touched in its case. He could not even play 
upon it after he had given up his orchestra. 
Nor did he listen to any music if he could 


2 37 


The Game’s the Thing 

avoid it. He got out of hearing it whenever 
he could, and when street strains were carried 
to him, he willed himself dead. He worked 
about the little shop with a burnt-out expres- 
sion on his face and clung to Elsa’s companion- 
ship and tenderness as one who felt the hurt 
of a great wound. 

His orchestra was dead to him. He never 
spoke of it ; occasionally he heard from 
chance remarks of customers of the wonder- 
ful progress the men were making under 
the new leader, who was young and gifted 
in leadership. To all this he steeled himself 
but slowly. 

One day Jean came bounding into the 
shop, home from school. She threw a ball 
with all her might upon the floor and tugged 
at her braids. 

Max picked up the ball. 

“ Here — isn’t this your ball ? ” he asked. 
“ Why did you throw it down like that? ” 

Jean hesitated and answered with half 
reluctance : 


238 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ Yes, it’s my ball, but I don’t want it any 
more.” 

Max examined the ball carefully. 

“ It seems to be a good ball — why don’t 
you want it any more ? ” 

Jean’s eyes were brimming with tears and 
Max with instant sympathy took her on his 
lap. 

“ I’m not going to play with my ball any 
more,” sobbed Jean, “ because Jamie Withers 
has gone and taken my game away from 
me.” 

“ Your game? ” questioned Max. 

“ Yes, a game I made ; the finest kind of 
a game. I showed the rest how to play and 
now, because I can’t run as fast as Jamie, 
they all want Jamie to be leader ’stead of 
me.” 

Max caught Jane’s hand in a grip that 
made her look up in surprise. “ And you 
won’t play your game any more ? ” 

“ No siree, Onkel Max, not when they got 
Jamie to take my place. Why, it was my 


2 39 


The Game’s the Thing 

game. I made it. Pretty soon we could’ve 
played it just right. It took ’em a long while 
to learn and now — now ” 

Onkel Max patted her and tried to comfort 
her. He could give her the very real sym- 
pathy of one who understood. 

It was a long time before Jean’s head lifted 
from Onkel Max’s shoulder. 

“ I think I’ll walk out with my pedometer 
for a while/’ she said slipping off his knee. 

“ Shall I take care of your ball for you ? 
he called after her. 

“ You can throw it away if you want to, 
Onkel Max,” answered Jean as she went out 
of the door. 

Max looked at the ball a long time — then 
he went slowly to his violin case, opened it 
and put the ball in beside his violin. 

Only the next day Jean came flying excit- 
edly to Onkel Max. 

“ Oh, Onkel Max, did you throw away my 
ball ? ” 


240 A Little Princess of Tonopah 
“ No.” 

“ Where did you put it? I want it again. 
Please give it back to me.” 

“ Why — what are you going to do with it? ” 
asked Max, taking the ball from the violin 
case and giving it to her. 

“ I’m going to play again. I got to think- 
ing, Onkel Max, and I’ve decided that it’s 
the game I care most for. The game’s the 
thing. I don’t care now ’cause I’m not leader. 
It’s better for the game for Jamie to be. But 
there’s one thing I can do first-rate, — a kind 
of throw hardly any of them can learn — and 
I’m going back to play so’s to do that. They 
need me for it, then we’ll have the game just 
right ; the way I’ve planned it so long. It’s 
just the game that matters — and oh, Onkel 
Max, you don’t know what a grand game it 
is ! And I’m not going to call it my game 
any more — ’cause it’s theirs too.” 

Jean took the ball eagerly and ran down 
the street in the direction of far-off ecstatic 
young shouts. 


241 


The Game’s the Thing 

Max leaned to look after the joyous figure. 
A new strong force tugged at him. A quick 
longing to touch his violin came to him and 
he turned eagerly toward the open case. He 
drew his bow across the strings and caught 
his breath as he heard the exquisite tones 
again. 

“ Max ! ” 

He paused, with his violin in his hand, at 
the sound of his name spoken, half hesitat- 
ingly. It was Helmer Scaaden, who it ap- 
peared had dropped in for some of the fresh 
sugar cakes. He carried his viola. He came 
to the counter and leaned upon it, looking at 
his friend half dubiously. Max saw that it 
was not really cakes that Helmer wanted. He 
held out his hand and Helmer grasped it, his 
hesitancy all gone. 

“ Max, we need only one more violin now 
for the Wagner orchestra.’’ 

“ One more ? ” cried Max. 

“ Yes, it’s a first violin we want. Do you 
know any one ? ” 


242 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Max stood very erect and eager. 

“ It’s a first violin you want ? Tell the 
boys I’ll be at practice to-night to take it.” 

“ Max I ” cried Helmer excitedly. “ Then 
at last your Wagner orchestra will come true.” 

“ Not mine, Helmer ; it's our orchestra 
now.” 

When Jean came back she found Max play- 
ing a victory song with all his might. Tante 
Elsa was hovering about him with joy written 
in every line of her face. 

“ Why, Onkel Max ! ” exclaimed Jean in 
surprise and delight. 

“ I’m going back into the game too,” he 
cried happily. “ You are right, Little Prin- 
cess ; you are right. The game’s the thing ! ” 


CHAPTER XVI 
jean’s new interest 

During Jean’s frequent visits to the Lone 
Trail Hospital, she developed a very great 
interest in a man who had lain for a long 
time with a wounded arm. He was help- 
lessly weak from exposure and was always 
lost in delirium, not delirium of a violent 
sort, but, as Jean told Father Dick, “just 
as if he were talking in a dream.” 

When she asked the nurse his name she 
had replied, “ John Clark, he gave it. But 
you can’t tell whether it’s the right one or 
not. They have a variety of names — men 
like him. He got his wound in some quarrel 
over a game. He has no friends, it seems, 
about here so we don’t know anything about 
him.” 

Jean knew why the nurse had said “ men 
like him.” She looked at the man’s face and 

found little that was strong and good in it. 

243 


244 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Yet there was something that interested her 
irresistibly and made her come back again 
and again, with some of Tante Else’s deli- 
cacies for him. She listened curiously to the 
man’s wandering talk. It grew less and less 
disconnected — and Jean soon picked up the 
thread of the man’s story. Bit by bit the 
snatches of his talk wove his tragedy. 

He had forged his father’s name — he had 
come west to “ make good ” before it was too 
late, before his father died, his father who 
had freed him from disgrace. Over and over, 
in a baffled voice, he asked the same question. 
Why had not luck come to him when he 
wanted so much to make things right ? 
Since luck had not come — and hard work 
had brought nothing — what were his brains 
given to him for, anyway — he wanted to 
know that — when they had been no use to 
him after all ? 

Here a cry always broke from the man’s 
lips and he would babble of trickery and 
scheming to which he had evidently resorted 


Jean's New Interest 245 

in vain. His conscience was sore, even in his 
delirium. Had he missed all the promptings 
of his better self? His old father’s tender 
face, and the memory of his better self, 
seemed always to haunt him. 

Sometimes his mind seemed to be going 
farther back into the past. He would hum 
snatches of college glees, which Jean had 
heard Father Dick sing so often. Then he 
was a boy again at his home in an eastern 
town with his father, loving him, yet dis- 
obeying him. Then he saw himself later, 
forgetting conscience, everything, except the 
gilded playthings of life. 

Always he cried out to live. He could not 
die — he would not die before he had restored 
every dollar to his father. He must live to 
restore his father’s faith in him. He must 
somehow bring happiness to the father’s 
broken heart. Whenever he spoke his fa- 
ther’s name there was a new note of tender- 
ness in his voice. As one groping for light 
in sacred places, the man’s spirit seemed to 


246 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

call out to his father. All the longing of his 
being for the good and beautiful spoke in his 
words of him. 

One story he repeated very often puzzled 
Jean. It was a medieval tale about a knight, 
who after many battles received his accolade. 
The story seemed to be fastened in the man’s 
mind and he unreeled it time after time. 

“ Father Dick, what’s an accolade?” asked 
Jean after one of her visits, when the man’s 
mind had dwelt on the old tale with unusual 
insistence. 

“ An accolade? ” answered her father. “ An 
accolade is a light blow on the shoulder. It 
was part of the ceremony that made a man a 
knight in the olden days ; it was an honor 
he won by a brave deed, or a sacrifice or some- 
thing that made him worthy to receive it. 
He knelt down, — then some words were said, a 
sword laid upon his shoulder, and he rose a 
knight, having received his accolade.” 

Jean mused dreamily with her chin on her 
hands. 


Jean’s New Interest 247 

“ And don’t they have accolades any more, 
Father Dick ? ” 

“ Not exactly — but I think every man has 
to get his accolade in a figurative sense to 
true manhood ; it’s not born with him, it’s not 
given to him. It’s something he has to fight 
for or make a sacrifice for, and no man’s a 
real man until he’s knighted by such an ac- 
colade. Lots of men never get one because 
they don’t try. But it seems to me it’s 
almost as much against a man to do nothing 
to let his chance pass as it is to do some- 
thing wrong. Do you see what I mean ? ” 

Jean nodded. 

“ Yes, I see — and now I know why my sick 
man talks about it all the time. That’s why 
he wants to live — to get his accolade. I’m 
going to help him get it.” 

“ But how ? ” 

“ 1 don’t know exactly yet. One thing, 
he hasn’t any money to start out with when 
he gets well. The nurse told me that. I’ll 
have to get some for him so hecan begin again.” 


248 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Jean took The Gold Eagle Man around to 
see the sick man, and to offer him another 
chance to be “ an angel of service/’ but when 
The Gold Eagle Man finished his study of the 
sick man’s face, he shook his head decisively. 

“ Allowin’ for what sickness has done, 
there’s not much in that man’s face to bank 
on. Nature pencils a man’s face up pretty 
plain for them that know how to read — and I 
guess I’ve learned her marks pretty well by 
this time. No, he’s not worth startin’ out 
again. He’d better die — and clean sand 
would be too good for the man’s bones to 
bleach on. It’s not kindness to give a man like 
him another chance. There’s no good in him.” 

Jean was disappointed, but she didn’t press 
her wish. 

“ I don’t want you to help if you don’t 
want to,” she said. “ But I’m going to go on 
helping him. I believe in him — I think he 
can win his accolade.” 


One day after the sick man’s reason had 


Jean’s New Interest 249 

returned, Jean found him propped up in the 
sunlight by the window. 

“ Isn’t the sunshine nice ? ” she said. 

The man smiled at her. 

“ I didn’t know — I didn’t know that sun- 
shine could be so good,” he answered putting 
out his hand and letting the sun shine 
warmly upon it. 

Jean thought that his face seemed some- 
how changed — a certain new firmness had 
taken the place of the loose, weak lines. 

“ It makes you glad to see it again because 
you’re going to get well — and you were afraid 
you’d die.” 

The man lifted himself with a movement of 
pride in his strength, and changed his position. 

“ Yes, that’s it.” 

“ Why did you want so much to get well? ” 
questioned Jean, holding her breath till he 
answered her test question. 

Something flashed in the man’s face as he 
studied Jean’s eyes which looked so search- 
ingly into his. 


250 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

His hand fumbled at his throat and the 
words came haltingly. 

“ I’ve done something wrong — and I don’t 
want to die before I make it right.” 

Jean drew a long breath of relief. He had 
told her the truth ! She had been right in 
trusting him. She put out her hand impul- 
sively and laid it on his. 

“ You can, I know you can ! ” she cried. 

The man’s eyes closed and his fingers 
gripped hers tensely. When he loosened his 
clasp, and looked at her again, Jean knew 
why he had shut his eyes so long. 

She smiled and began to talk of little 
things in her gay fashion until it was time 
to go. Then she remembered. There was 
one more test. 

“ Will you — will you tell me your real 
name ? ” she asked, looking at him again with 
a serious searching expression upon her face. 

The man hesitated only a moment. 

“ My name is Paul Hulbert,” he answered. 

Jean gave a little start. 


Jean’s New Interest 251 

“ Why — that’s The Man of Mystery’s 
name ! ” she cried. 

“ The Man of Mystery ? ” he questioned 
slowly. 

Jean told him about The Man of Mystery 
in Payneville. The sick man leaned forward 
eagerly as her story went on. 

“ I am his son,” he cried out hoarsely. 
“ It was there that he went to get away from 
every one who knew what I had done. I 
heard, I have known for a long time that he 
was there — but I can’t write — I can’t go to 
him, until I make good.” 

Jean flew home as if on winged feet, she 
could hardly wait to tell the news. 

“ Oh, Father Dick, Father Dick — I’ve 
found The Man of Mystery’s son ! The Man 
of Mystery came to live in Payneville because 
he wanted to be in a place tucked off from 
things.” 

“ He certainly found it in Payneville,” 
said her father. 

“ Oh, don’t interrupt, Father Dick, and 


252 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

where no one would know about the dreadful 
thing his son had done. That’s why he stays 
all alone in the Big Yellow House and looks 
so sad, and doesn’t want to see any one, 
and now his son’s going to get well just as 
fast as he can so he can get his accolade and 
go back to his father. He promised me he 
would. I said, ‘ Do you cross your heart 
and hope to die that you’ll do it?’ and it 
was just as still till he answered — I think 
God was leaning and listening to hear his 
answer — and then my sick man said, ‘ Yes, 
I do promise,’ — just like that — so I know 
he will surely do it. I guess The Gold Eagle 
Man will be sorry for what he said — and wish 
he’d helped — but we can do without his 
helping, for I’ve thought of a beautiful way. 
I’m going to give a benefit for my sick man. 
I thought of it on the way home — when I 
was running along so fast and thinking of 
everything, all at once it popped into my 
head — I guess God put it there.” 

Jean went on eagerly with the details of 


2 53 


Jean’s New Interest 

her story, all the while piecing together 
plans for her benefit. She paused very often, 
overwhelmed by the thought of what might 
have been. 

“ Oh, Father Dick, suppose — suppose I 
hadn’t believed in him, when he belongs to 
my dear Man of Mystery ! ” 

“ Why I thought you’d forgotten all about 
your Man of Mystery.” 

Jean’s eyes grew very wide in grieved sur- 
prise. 

“ I have said a prayer for him every 
single night since we came away from Payne- 
ville,” she answered in solemn proof of her 
loyalty. 

Her father looked at her with quizzical 
tenderness. 

“ But what if The Gold Eagle Man is right 
and you are wrong about this man ? ” 

“ You will see,” said Jean, nodding her 
head wisely in stubborn faith. 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE BENEFIT CONCERT 

“ I am not going to have grown-ups in 
my benefit,” announced Jean, as she went 
over her plans with The Rainbow Lady. 
“ All the performers are going to be chil- 
dren, and I’ll just have those who can really 
do things.” 

“ You must have a variety of things, so 
your program will please everybody. An 
audience in a mining town is very mixed,” 
suggested The Rainbow Lady. 

“ Yes, I’m going to have all sorts of 

things. Skin is going to perform on his 

trapeze and do tumbling. At first he said 

that wasn’t the thing to do for a benefit, 

then I told him the story Father Dick likes 

so much. Once there was a tumbler — it was 

in a long, long ago century when everything 

was different. There was a great festival and 

254 


The Benefit Concert 255 

people came to offer gifts to their saint. 
Every one had wonderful gifts to offer except 
this poor tumbler, and he had nothing except 
his gift for tricks and tumbling, so he offered 
that. He tumbled and did tricks the very 
best he could before the image of the beauti- 
ful saint. Every one laughed at him and 
said, ‘ Ho, thou fool, — to offer such a gift ! ’ 
and that made the poor tumbler very sad. 
Then all at once he found in his hand a 
sword that would bend like a rush and yet 
pierce adamant, which is the hardest thing 
there is. The people all drew back and said, 
1 What strange thing is this ? ’ and then a man 
who was a Magian came forward and looked 
at the sword. When he saw what it was he 
cried, 1 Behold, it is the Gift-Sword which our 
saint bestows upon him who gives the most 
acceptable gift/ 

“The poor tumbler wept for joy because 
the saint liked his gift more than any of the 
rest and the people exclaimed, ‘ How can this 
be, when we have brought precious stones 


256 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

and cloth of gold, and sweet smelling in- 
cense, while this poor tumbler brought noth- 
ing except his foolish tricks ? ’ Then the 
Magian said, 1 You have brought beautiful 
gifts in sooth, but they are but the odds and 
ends of your great riches — you have kept 
your best to show to the world. This 
tumbler has brought the very best he has.’ 
Then the tumbler went out into the world 
and slew dragons with his Gift-Sword and 
after a while he had a kingdom all his own 
by the ocean which he loved. Father Dick 
says this isn't just like the story in his book 
with the ragged edges — he alw r ays builds on 
pieces to his stories — and I love the pieces 
best because they are the best part. 

“ Skin said it was a good story and he 
guessed if tumbling could make such a hit 
with a saint it was good enough to do before 
Tonopah people, so he is going to do it. He 
is going to tumble before a make-believe 
queen instead of a saint. We would have 
had a saint, only we couldn't make a halo. 


The Benefit Concert 257 

Jessica Stone is going to be the queen, be- 
cause she is the loveliest one I could find. 
She is going to wear strings and strings of 
beads for pearls and her mother is going to 
let her wear her diamonds and she is going 
to have a tiara. She will be very grand. 
Then Aurelia is going to do some cunning 
Spanish dances in a red and yellow dress 
which looks like my clown four-o’clocks in 
Payneville. Then we will all sing.” 

“ What are you going to do by yourself? ” 
asked The Rainbow Lady. 

“ Oh, I will do everything I can to help. 
Tubby says I must whistle like the birds and 
maybe I’ll dance, for we must make it lively, 
or else the messenger boys will yell things at 
us. Oh, yes — we are going to have a play. 
I don’t know what it will be yet — I am going 
to make it up. Tubby is going to be door- 
keeper and I am the stage-manager. Tubby 
will help me as soon as he gets through with 
the tickets. Aurelia’s father is going to get 
the hall for us. It is going to be very nice. 


258 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Father Ambrose is going to make the posters. 
We would like it if you would play the piano 
for us.” 

“ That would be great fun. It’s a great 
honor to be the only grown-up to take part 
in the benefit.” 

“ Oh, that isn’t being in the benefit ! ” ex- 
plained Jean quickly, “ because the piano’s 
not on the stage. You just sit down below 
off the platform and you aren’t in it at all. 
Maybe I will have Onkel Max and his 
orchestra play too — before the curtain goes 
up — but they will nqt be in the benefit.” 

The Rainbow Lady accepted her off-the- 
platform position with gay humility and sug- 
gested an immediate rehearsal of Jean’s part 
in the concert. 

“ I would, but I have to go hunt some 
more performers. It is so hard to get the 
right kind.” 

Jean went off upon her quest, and at the 
very first turn in the road she encountered 
Beatrice. 


The Benefit Concert 


2 59 


“ I’ve been hunting everywhere for you, 
Jean,” cried Beatrice, running up to her, all 
out of breath. “ I want to tell you that I’ll 
be in your benefit.” 

Jean looked at her dubiously. 

“ I haven’t asked you, Beatrice.” 

“ I know, but I want to be in it.” 

“ But, Beatrice — you can’t do anything — 
how can you be in my benefit? ” 

“ I will sing.” 

“ Oh, Beatrice ! I couldn’t let you try to 

i 

sing. You squeal — and get off the tune ! It 
would spoil the benefit.” 

“ Well, I am going to be in it, anyhow.” 

“ Why, you can’t be, Beatrice, if I say you 
can’t. I would let you be the queen to smile 
at Skin’s tumbling, but I had to get the beau- 
tifullest queen I could find, and that is Jessica 
Stone. I’m sorry, Beatrice, but you can’t be 
in my benefit.” 

Jean regarded Beatrice firmly, as she pouted 
her surprise. 

“ I’m always in everything,” said Beatrice 


26 o A Little Princess of Tonopah 

defiantly. “ Nobody ever has anything with- 
out asking me. All the little girls in town 
know that they can’t have anything without 
me. They wouldn’t dare.” 

“ Well, I dare, Beatrice. You can’t be in 
my benefit. It’s not because I don’t like you, 
but because you oughtn’t to want to spoil the 
benefit when we are giving it for people who 
are sick.” 

With that Jean started off and left Beatrice 
staring after her in amazement. 

“ I’ll not come,” Beatrice cried after her. 
“ And if I don’t come, Nellie Searles and lots 
of the others ’ll not come either — and your 
old benefit will be a failure.” 

Jean turned around and laughed good-na- 
turedly. 

“ I just know you don’t really want it to be 
a failure — and I ’most know every one of you 
will be there.” 

Tubby was disconsolate because he could 
not “ perform.” 

“ I wi$ht there was something I could do 

A 

/ 


The Benefit Concert 261 

besides takin' tickets, and helpin' be stage- 
manager an' lettin' Skin fall on me if he 
tumbles off the trapeze." 

“ You are going to sing in the chorus," said 
Jean. 

“ Aw, well — that's nothin'. I'd like to be 
a star in something." 

“ I wish you could, Tubby. Maybe you 
can think of something you can do better 
than any one else. Sometimes people don't 
do things just because they haven’t tried." 

“ The only thing I can do is to make faces." 

Jean clapped her hands. 

“We will have a pantomime and you can 
be the star ! " 

Jean made the tickets for the concert her- 
self, and decided to call it a benefit for the 
Lone Trail Hospital. 

“ So I’ll not have to say any thing about my 
sick man," she explained to Father Dick. “ I 
shouldn't like to tell every one about him, 
because they might laugh like The Gold Eagle 
Man and not believe in my sick r$an at all. 


262 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

I will give the benefit for all the poorest Lone 

i 

Trail Hospital patients, then I’ll give half of 
the money to my sick man and the other half 
to the pretty nurse in the charity ward so she 
can divide it among the rest who need it. I 
haven’t had time to get acquainted with them 
all, because my Man of Mystery’s son needs 
so much attention — but the nurse knows 
about every single one, for she told me so.” 
The benefit was a great success. Tubby 
didn’t have “ enough tickets to go round.” 
All The Rainbow Lady’s friends were there 
— and Father Ambrose with a large party 
of other children-lovers. The Gold Eagle 
Man distributed numerous tickets and made 
his friends come. Giacino came with a 
lot of the foreigners in his wake. Warren 
Hudson and his sister in pretty new clothes 
were well up in front. Jiro Imado, Tante 
Elsa — every one was there who knew and 
loved Jean. Jean peeped through an open- 
ing in the curtain and gave a gasp at the 
sight of the big audience. She was delighted 


The Benefit Concert 263 

that there were so many children. When 
she saw Beatrice in a pale blue silk dress, 
fluttering her fan on the front row, surrounded 
by Nellie Searles’ set, all patting their hair 
and straightening their bows, Jean’s triumph 
was complete. 

All of “ Max’s orchestra,” humorously 
aware that they were “ not really in the 
benefit,” played Weber’s “ Oberon ” for an 
overture. Then Jean excitedly whispered to 
Max that Skin didn’t have his trapeze clothes 
on yet — so the orchestra played Fillipucci’s 
“ Song of the Bee ” and humorous variations 
on a German folk-song, all of which went 
straight to the children’s hearts and set them 
clapping furiously. 

At last the curtain went up with a delight- 
ful rush and every one leaned forward eagerly 
as Skin ran out in a wonderful striped cos- 
tume with cap and bells. The messenger 
boys led in the loud clapping as Skin stood 
for a moment statue-like with folded arms, 
his head high, surveying his audience. Then 


264 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

he swung himself lightly from Tubby's shoul- 
der to the trapeze and there performed the 
extraordinary feats of twisting and turning 
which he had practiced so long and faithfully 
in the Palace. 

“ It's just as good as a circus," whispered 
Jean behind the scenes, squeezing Aurelia's 
arm in delight. “ Oh, if he just doesn’t fall." 

Skin did not fall. Never had an acrobat 
finer poise than Skin, — he went through his 

i 

performance without a slip, and then, jump- 
ing from the trapeze, the acrobat became a 
tumbler for the Queen. The Queen seated 
herself upon the throne with all the dignity 
which her gorgeous finery inspired ; Tubby 
threw some of The Rainbow Lady’s gay sofa 
cushions upon the floor ; the Queen graciously 

waved her hand and Skin did his tumbling 

% 

and juggling with such inimitable cleverness 
that the audience shouted excited bravos. 

With a gay jingle of his bells, Skin ran off 
the stage. He could not be persuaded to 
come back for an encore performance. 



“ IT'S JUST AS GOOD AS A CIRCUS” 
























‘ 




















The Benefit Concert 265 

“ I’m not goin’ to spoil it. I’d fumble sure 
if I tried it over again,” he said in answer to 
Jean’s pleading as the applause came echoing 
to them. 

“ But you must bow your thanks anyhow 
— go out and waggle your ears, Skin.” 

Jean gave him a little shove back on the 
stage. With a pleased expression on his face, 
Skin waggled his large ears expressively and 
bowed jerkily — which unaffected acknowl- 
edgment of their appreciation made the 
audience break out into renewed cheer- 
ing. 

Then on went Aurelia Quijada with some 
little Italian girls Jean had found about 
town. They pirouetted charmingly through 
some “ gypsy ” dances and flung their berib- 
boned skirts gaily about in natural abandon 
to the music which The Rainbow Lady 
adapted for them from the ballet music of 
Saint-Saen’s “ Henry VIII ” and Bizet’s sec- 
ond “ Carmen ” Suite. 

The shadow pantomime came next, in 


266 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

which Tubby was the star. It was an Alice- 
in- Wonderland pantomime and Tubby sur- 
passed himself as the Walrus. So clever was 
his mimicry that from all over the house the 
Shadow Walrus's words were shouted at him 
from time to time, at just the right moment. 
Tubby would not do any of it over, though 
the rest of the Wonderland fold were willing 
to respond to the encore. 

“ It's too hot," cried Tubby, pulling off his 
Walrus guise. “ I’d smother if I put that on 
again." 

To Dvorak’s Humoresque, Jean did her 
11 elf-dance," with such grace and irresistible 
charm that the messenger boys shouted re- 
gardless of order and people stood up and 
waved their handkerchiefs. Jean “ had her 
breath again ’’ by the time they stopped 
clapping, for it was a very long time till the 
applause died away with a final hand-clap 
from The Gold Eagle Man’s corner. Then 
Jean threw up her head and astonished every 
one by a medley of bird music. Every one 


The Benefit Concert 267 

was spellbound — there was not a whisper 
in the house, while Jean trilled her sweet 
notes. In the hush of delight, the memories 
of the older ones went back to the trees and 
the birds they had left for the new land. 
There was the meadow-lark’s morning notes 
from scented fields of clover ; the robin’s 
song out in the June apple-tree ; the busy 
whisking wren’s little paean from under the 
eaves ; the whippoorwill’s cry from the 
pines ; the sparrow’s chatter from the dusty 
road ; the bluebird’s soft call — these and 
numberless other birds’ songs wove in and 
out of Jean’s medley. 

Again and again the insistent encoring 
brought her back until Jean had to shake 
her head and explain that she had whistled 
everything she knew. She spoke to the 
audience as if it were a great composite of 
dear intimate friends. 

“ If I could do any more to help, I would,” 
she said throwing out her hand with a pretty 
speaking gesture, “ but I’ve done every single 


268 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

thing I know — and besides, it’s time for us to 
sing.” 

The audience laughed and let her go. 

Then all the performers sang in chorus — 
folk-songs and negro melodies, which The 
Rainbow Lady had trained them to do. 

After that Cop brought in his dog Bing, 
who could do a great many clever tricks. 
Then there were some clog-steps and more 
singing. 

The last number on the program was the 
little play which Jean had “ made up,” with 
special care to show all the actors off to the 
best advantage. It was a toy fantasy, in 
which the toys in the nursery “ woke up 
alive ” and lived out before the interested 
audience a thrilling little comedy drama full 
of bright fancy and natural humor. The 
costumes — thanks to The Rainbow Lady — 
made the Toy-folk look very real. The 
scenery was indicated by Jean’s numerous 
signs : “ This is a Beautiful Room,” “ Here is 
a Tall Tree,” “ A Dangerous Trap-Door,” and 


The Benefit Concert 269 

so on. With the help of these suggestive signs 
the imagination of the audience was quite 
able to supply the deficiencies in scenic 
effect. 

The Toy-folk were in rebellion against 
their owners for shabby, inconsiderate treat- 
ment. They plotted revenge upon the Bar- 
barians and, after much wily scheming, the 
Toy-folk were victorious. The curtain went 
down as the talking dolls were poking and 
squeezing their heartless Mistress Peggy, 
making her keep up a ceaseless monologue, 
and the mechanical toys, headed by the irate 
jumping-jack on a fiery rocking-horse, were 
mercilessly prodding their Master Jack, com- 
pelling him to caper about in perpetual 
motion. 

When it was all over the people stood up 
on the seats and clapped and called Jean’s 
name until she came out with all the per- 
formers holding one another’s hands and 
stood before the curtain. Then Jean had to 
make a little speech, in which she said she 


270 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

felt happier than she had ever felt in her life 
and she hoped they all did too. 

When Jean and Tubby counted the pro- 
ceeds, Jean was ecstatic. 

“ Lots of people must have paid three or 
four times for their tickets/’ she concluded 
in explanation of the amount. 

“ Humph, — ten times, some of ’em — like 
The Gold Eagle Man and his senator friend 
and those Philadelphia visitors.” 

“ I’m afraid your sick man will do nothing 
but live on the interest of his money,” re- 
marked her father teasingly. 

“ Ho — this isn’t so very much for Tonopah 
— but I’m glad it’s enough. I was afraid 
there wouldn’t be enough after I gave all 
the performers presents and the rest was 
divided.” 

Jean had the benefit money changed into 
shining new gold pieces — then she went 
around to the hospital “ with something 
singing in her heart,” she told her father 
afterward. She gave the head nurse in the 


The Benefit Concert 271 

charity ward one of the little chamois bags 
full of its golden “ help-money,” as she called 
it. Then she went to Paul Hulbert’s bed. 
She found him asleep — and she slipped the 
other treasure-sack into his hand without 
awakening him. Then she got behind the 
screen and waited for him to open his eyes. 
It was not long until he stirred, and as Jean 
watched his incredulous happiness she knew 
the rapture of one whose gift carries joy. 
She could not come from behind the screen 
at once to explain, because she had to make 
the tears stop coming to her eyes. 

“ I’ve always wanted to leave a gift with 
somebody when he was asleep — something he 
needed more than anything else in the world 
— and then, to watch him wake up and find 
it in his hand,” she said when she told Father 
Dick about it. “ But, oh, it was a million 
times more beautiful to do it than I ever 
thought it could be ! ” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


A REJECTED GIFT 

“ I’d like some fudge,” said The Gold Eagle 
Man, appearing in the shop one day after Jean 
was home from school. 

“ I haven’t a bit — but I’m just going to 
make some,” answered Jean, setting to work 
to get things ready. 

“ You’ve been too busy earnin’ money for 
other folks to earn much for yourself lately, I 
guess. How’s the surprise fund gettin’ on? ” 

Jean’s face fell. 

“ It’s a long way from fifty dollars yet. 
You see, there was Christmas and so many 
gifts to give, and then, my benefit took such 
a long time, getting ready for it and every- 
thing. I haven’t caught up yet.” 

The Gold Eagle Man watched her set out 
her fudge pans. 

“How’s Red-bud?” he asked suddenly. 

272 


2 73 


A Rejected Gift 

Jean almost dropped her pans. Had Tante 
Elsa’s little stuffed birds on the mantel burst 
into a chorus of chirps and trills, Jean would 
not have been more surprised. 

“ Why-ee ! How did you know ? Nobody 
knew but Tubby.” For one black moment 
she wondered if Tubby bad told. Then her 
white flame of faith in him burned up brightly 
again and she burst out vehemently, “ And 
Tubby would never, never tell.” 

“ No, Tubby didn’t tell. I was in the place 
when you bought your shares.” 

Jean’s memory flashed back to the gray hat. 
“ Then it was you — and you’ve known all 
this time without saying a word ? ” she cried 
incredulously. 

“ Don’t you think I can keep a secret? I 
was waitin’ for you to ask my advice. You 
ought t’ have done that in the first place — you 
bought mighty poor stock.” 

Jean regarded him severely. 

“ I s’pose you know lots about mines and 
stocks and things — but I don’t care what any 


274 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

one says, I think Red-bud is the very nicest 
kind of mining stock to have.” 

“ But you must be kind of tired havin’ it 
do nothin’.” 

“ Oh, it saves my worrying when it just 
stands still. I don’t have to watch it all the 
time. I haven’t been down to look at the 
board for a long, long time. I wait to see in 
the paper — and it always says just the same 
thing. I used to hurry down to look at the 
blackboard every day at first, but I hardly 
ever go any more.” 

“ Well, I hope it’ll not disappoint you,” 

said The Gold Eagle Man, rising abruptly to go. 

“ Of course it’ll not disappoint me,” an- 
swered Jean with cheerful confidence as she 
poised her measuring cup to say good-bye. 

Hardly had her fudge begun to boil, before 
The Gold Eagle Man came hurrying in again. 

“ Give me your Red-bud stock and let me 
sell it right away — it’s taken a big jump.” 

Jean let her spoon clatter into the pan and 
gave a softly breathed cry of delight. 


A Rejected Gift 275 

“ I knew it — I knew it would,” she said 
dancing up and down. “ But why must I 
give it to you to sell ? Can't it wait till my 
fudge is done? ” 

“ No, it’ll not wait for anything — there’s 
no telling what it will do — it may go down 
again any minute,” said The Gold Eagle Man 
with decision. “ And you can’t go off and 
let all that fudge spoil. I’ve just been gettin’ 
my mouth ready for it. Give me your cer- 
tificate and I’ll ’tend to it for you.” 

“ Watch the fudge then while I’m gone.” 

Jean ran off excitedly to unlock her little 
treasure-box and bring out the precious bit of 
paper which had been such a secret delight to 
her for so long. 

She gave it to The Gold Eagle Man and 
snatched the spoon to save her fudge from 
burning. 

“ I’ll be back before your fudge is ready to 
eat,” said The Gold Eagle Man as he hurried 
off. 

He kept his word. Jean was just topping 


276 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

each piece with a bit of cherry, when he re- 
turned. 

“ Shut your eyes and hold out your hand,” 
he said. 

Jean shut her eyes obediently and held out 
a sugary hand. Then he dropped something 
softly chinking into her palm and when Jean 
opened her eyes she found three shining eagles. 

“ There’s your Red-bud profit,” said The 
Gold Eagle Man, laughing at her eyes, which 
outshone the gold pieces. 

Only a little while after The Gold Eagle 
Man had left, Tubby came in with a very 
sympathetic expression on his face. 

“Now, if you’d just a-bought Fighting 
Mohawk — your Red-bud’s down to four cents. 
You’ve just thrown away your money.” 

“ Oh, has it gone down so soon after it went 
up so high ? ” 

“Went up? What do you mean? It’s 
never been up.” 

Jean exhibited her gold pieces trium- 
phantly and told how The Gold Eagle Man 


A Rejected Gift 277 

knew about Red-bud and how he had sold it 
for her. 

f “ Yes, it did go up, Tubby — while I was 
making my fudge — and The Gold Eagle Man 
hurried and sold my stock while it was up so 
high.” 

Tubby’s eyes grew wide. Then he gave a 
low expressive whistle. 

44 What is it, Tubby ? ” 

Tubby put his hands in his pockets and 
tramped around the room several times before 
he answered. 

“ Do you know what The Gold Eagle Man’s 
done ? He’s given you that money. He’s 
just foolin’ you about Red-bud’s going up. 
He just saw his chance while you was makin’ 
fudge and he made good use of it. Trust him 
not to let a chance slip that he wants. He 
knew Red-bud had gone down and he didn’t 
want you to be disappointed.” 

44 Oh, Tubby ! ” 

Jean threw the gold pieces on the braided 
mat between them. 


278 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ It’s so,” said Tubby. “ That’s what he’s 
done. You can just ask him.” 

Jean dashed the tears from her eyes and 
marched to the telephone. 

“You’ve — you’ve just been pretending,” 
she said in a shaking voice when The Gold 
Eagle Man answered her. 

“ What do you mean, Jean ? ” 

“ About Red-bud — it didn’t go up at all — 
it’s down to almost nothing.” 

“ Who’s been tellin’ tales? Well, s’pose it 
is down ? I took your stock, Jean, and it’s 
worth three eagles to me, so it’s all right. 
Just put the money in your surprise-fund.” 

“I — I can’t. Oh, don’t you see I can’t? 
It’s lying on the floor, waiting for you to 
come and pick it up. I want you to come 
get it right away. I will never, never take 
it.” 

“ Oh, come now, Jean — I want you to have 
it, I gave it to you.” 

“ I can’t take it, because I didn’t earn it 
really and truly.” 


A Rejected Gift 279 

And deaf to his pleading, Jean hung up the 
receiver. 

When The Gold Eagle Man came into the 
shop, he found the three gold coins still lying 
on the little round floor-mat. Jean was 
standing on a very high stool, trying to clean 
Tante Elsa’s top shelf, to divert her mind. 

“ A new kind of service, eh ? ” said The 
Gold Eagle Man. 

Jean looked over her shoulder and sur- 
veyed him from her height. 

“ I’m not doing this to help Tante Elsa, so 
it’s not service at all — I’m just doing it for 
myself, to keep me from thinking about 
those horrid gold pieces.” 

The Gold Eagle Man laughed and caught 
hold of the stool. 

“ Promise you’ll pick ’em up and put ’em 
in your pocket or I’ll pull this stool out from 
under you.” 

“ You can’t bully me,” cried Jean fiercely, 
catching hold of the big shelf with firm hands 
and kicking the stool away. 


280 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

The Gold Eagle Man looked at her dan- 
gling from the shelf and repressed a shout. 
He put his hands in his pockets and saun- 
tered about the room, awaiting Jean's call for 
help. 

No call came. Jean’s face was very red 
and she looked ready at any minute to drop 
in a heap. 

“ Don’t you want me to help you ? ” ven- 
tured The Gold Eagle Man at last. 

Jean gave him a dark, dark look. 

“ No,” she said between her teeth. 

“ How do you expect to get down 
then?” 

“ When I get ready to get down I’ll do a 
falling jump backward like Skin.” 

And before The Gold Eagle Man could 
catch her, Jean doubled up her knees and 
sent herself flying backward down on the 
rug. 

Her heels ground the gold pieces disdain- 
fully as she sat in a little heap and looked up 
at The Gold Eagle Man victoriously. 


28l 


A Rejected Gift 

He leaned back vanquished and regarded 
her admiringly for a time in eloquent silence. 

“ Jean, I surrender,” he cried, “ to the 
Little Princess.” * 


CHAPTER XIX 


ANOTHER DECISION 

Not long after this incident, The Gold 
Eagle Man came and asked for a private 
conversation with Jean’s father. 

The Gold Eagle Man looked very solemnly 
at Father Dick across his book-strewn table. 

“ Well ? ” asked Jean’s father tentatively, 
as the silence lengthened. 

The Gold Eagle Man moved nervously in 
his chair. 

“ I’ve got a lot to say — but I don’t know 

how to say it. It’s goin’ to be hard work. I 

wish I could find a word that would put it 

just right. I s’pose there are a lot of words 

in the dictionary that aren’t used much that 

might help out some, but they’d likely turn 

out too shop-worn to do the work proper. It 

seems to me I ought to have some brand new 

282 


Another Decision 283 

word coined just for this feeling I’ve had for 
a long time and can’t get rid of it. Not a 
crocodile word, with tears streamin’ through 
all the letters and crape flyin’ out at the end 
— not that kind — but a good word that would 
start out sad and lonesome, — in a dignified 
way, that is, — and end up humble.” 

Father Dick twirled his pen and looked 
inquiringly at The Gold Eagle Man, who 
lapsed into a period of gloom. 

“ Yes ? ” Father Dick said interrogatively 
after a long period of silence. 

The Gold Eagle Man roused himself and 
went on talking. 

“ To-day I went down to the bank and got 
out as many bags of gold as I could carry up 
to the shack. Then I piled it all upon the 
table there and stared at it till my eyes got 
all blinky with the shine. But ’twasn’t any 
use. Money’s no good for what ails me. It 
wouldn’t make any difference if the whole 
Pacific was full of gold eagles — and all mine.” 
“ What is the matter? ” asked Father Dick. 


284 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

The Gold Eagle Man gave him a long, 
searching look. 

“ What’s the matter with me? Well, I’ll 
just break loose for once and try to tell you. 
I say try, for I’m not sure you’ll more’n half 
understand. Did you ever stop to think what 
it is gets in between us humans, like a fog, 
when we try to get a real good look at each 
other? It’s curious, how tangled up we do 
get when we start searchin’ for a straight idea 
of the other fellow. Maybe it’s the words — 
maybe they’re not right. Or maybe it’s the 
fellow that listens. The trouble never seems 
to be with the one who is doin’ the talking. 
You must keep your ears open when you’re 
listenin’ to me now. You don’t want to put 
on any edges yourself.” 

The Gold Eagle Man paused again. It was 
evident that he found it hard to come to the 
point. 

“ I’ll do my best to be a model listener,” 
said Father Dick encouragingly. 

The Gold Eagle Man drew a long breath. 


Another Decision 285 

“ This is a queer thing I’ve got to tell you 
about. It began with little nothin’-to-speak- 
of-things that kept a-growin’ together until 
they got to be a big I-dare-you-to whole. 
Then this big thing sized me up as bein' little 
enough to grab hold of — and it took a good 
grip — shook me all to pieces, and left me 
like this. I’ve felt small at times — middlin’ 
small, that is — like when the other fellow 
pays when you really meant to treat him, 
or like when you’re down in ’Frisco forgetful 
of time and the trail home and some one is 
just smart enough to snap up some of the 
claims you’ve been puttin’ off workin’ till the 
last minute. But this is a different kind of 
smallness and I can’t pick up a rag-tag end 
of anything anywhere to brace me up.” 

Father Dick nodded comprehendingly. He 
understood the feeling if not the cause. 

“ You’d think I’d find enough to do and 
forget it — get into some new deals and get oc- 
cupied keeping other people steppin’ lively. 
But no — I just can’t do it. All the days are 


286 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

just alike. Every night I think I’ll wake up 
next morning gettin’ restless for rainbows 
with fine big jackpots at the end — or for 
something different, but I don’t. This feel- 
ing doesn’t give me much time to do anything 
else but think — and that’s what I do — just 
think and think the same thing over every 
day. There’s just one thing on earth I want 
— I want — Jean.” 

Father Dick started to his feet in amaze- 
ment. 

“ Jean ? ” he cried. 

“ Yes, I want to adopt her, to have her for 
my own. I can give her everything on earth. 
I just can’t get along without her — I’ve got 
to have her.” He set his jaw squarely. 
“ What are you laughin’ at?” he demanded 
savagely of Father Dick. 

“ Aren’t you rather young to take the 
responsibility of fathering a twelve-year-old 
girl ? ” 

“ How old are you ? ” The Gold Eagle 
Man asked challengingly. 


Another Decision 


287 


“ Thirty-four.” 

The Gold Eagle Man’s fist went down on 
the table in triumph. 

“I am just one year wiser than you are 
then — I’m thirty-five. I guess I’m plenty 
old enough to see her through the world 
right. If there is anything I wouldn’t do for 
her I don’t know what it is. I could cer- 
tainly give her more than you can.” 

Richard Kingsley winced and looked at 
The Gold Eagle Man more seriously than he 
had looked at him since they had begun talk- 
ing. Nobody knew how he longed to shower 
the earth’s most precious things upon Jean. 
Sometimes it seemed to him he could not live 
and see her go without what he wished to 
give her. He could make no reply. The 
Gold Eagle Man broke the silence. 

“ The most important date in my calendar 
for the last seven months was the day I first 
laid eyes on her. I’ve got that first time in 
my head just like a movin’ picture, and I can 
get it out any time I want to and look at it. 


288 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

I can see her cornin’ toward me, lickety-cut 
through the sage-brush — and then how she 
jerked her horse alongside of mine and held 
out her arms to me all out of breath, scared 
of the desert. I don’t know just what it was 
I liked best about her face. You know how 
it is in ’Frisco when you’re lookin’ at a lot of 
flower bunches there on the corner. First 
you think it’s the violets that makes the 
whole thing look so good — then it appears to 
be the pinks — and then, all of a sudden, it 
surely is the daisies, and so on. I liked her 
face — every bit of it — it looked as much like 
a pink and white apple blossom as anything 
that I could call to mind just then. Her 
hair was blowin’ all around her face as if it 
didn’t want to get very far away from it — 
and her mouth — she didn’t need to say a 
word — her lips kept crookin’ round in so 
many speakin’ ways. Her eyes — I can’t say 
much about her eyes as they looked that day 
— exceptin’ a man would be bound to remem- 
ber ’em long after he was dead — he couldn’t 


Another Decision 289 

help himself. From that time the little lady 
had a hold on me nobody else ever had in all 
my life — and I’ve got to the place where 
nothin’ else matters but havin’ her for my 
own. My money’s not worth any more than 
quitch-grass if it’ll not help bring her to me. 
It ought to help some. I’ll give her every- 
thing. I’ll spend the rest of my days huntin’ 
the earth over for things she wants and ask 
nothin’ more. She’s pure gold — she’s a real 
princess — she’s sound as a livin’ being could 
ever be. Why, man, there’s not another like 
her in the whole world.” 

Father Dick’s hand went out to meet The 
Gold Eagle Man’s. There was a long silence 
between them. Father Dick leaned his head 
upon his hand. When he looked up there 
was a drawn expression on his face. 

“ We will let Jean settle it,” he said, rising 
and going to the door. 

Jean came dancing in with very red cheeks. 
She had just been outdoors and she had 
caught something of the spring buoyancy. 


290 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

She listened with naive seriousness as her 
father told her what The Gold Eagle Man 
wanted to do and what it would mean — the 
difference it would make in her way of 
living. 

They waited, with a tension hard to con- 
trol, for her answer. She was not long in 
giving it. 

“ Why, nobody else could ever be my 
father, except my own Father Dick — be- 
cause we belong.’’ 

She came and stood very close to her father 
with her cheek against his. 

The Gold Eagle Man gave a baffled excla- 
mation. The absurdity of his request was 
suddenly revealed to him. Then his indomi- 
table will rose again. 

“ Well — what do you say to a half-interest? 
So I can spend my money on you. You’re 
welcome to every cent I’ve got.” 

“ I only want what Father Dick can give 
me,” she said quickly. 

Then at the hurt look on The Gold Eagle 


Another Decision 291 

Man's face, she went to him and threw her 
arms about his neck. 

“ If I could have more than one father, 
I’d like him to be you. Next to Father Dick 
I love you more than any one else in the 
world — but it isn’t in the father- way. I can 
only love Father Dick like that.” 

“ You ought to be contented with that,” 
said Father Dick, watching her with his eyes 
shining. 

“ I guess I ought,” answered The Gold 
Eagle Man slowly, holding her as if he could 
never give her back to Father Dick. “ I 
guess I’ll have to.” 

Then he released her suddenly and squared 
his shoulders as she ran back into her father’s 


arms. 


CHAPTER XX 




A DANGEROUS ADVENTURE 

“ Why, Tubby, you’ve never told me before 
that you have a cave,” said Jean in response 
to Tubby’s invitation to “ come see the cave.” 
“ That’s ’cause it was a secret cave. Now 
we can’t have it any more ’cause there’s goin’ 
to be a mine started right near an’ so the 
cave’ll not be safe. We’ve had it since last 
September.” 

“ Who’s we?” 

“ Cop and Skin and me. We found it one 

day when we was out explorin’. We climbed 

and climbed an’ pretty soon we came to a ledge 

that made a kind of a bridge to a dark lookin’ 

hole an’ Skin said, i I dare you t’ follow me,’ 

and then if he didn’t get down on his stomach 

an’ crawl an’ slide an’ wiggle clear acrost that 

place. He stood up on the other side with 

his clothes all torn an’ dirty an’ grinned at us 

292 


A Dangerous Adventure 293 

an’ said, 1 Why don’t you come along?’ I 
looked at Cop an’ Cop looked at me. I had 
on my best clothes, ’cause it was Sunday, an’ I 
didn’t ever expect to get acrost if I tried it ; 
but I wasn’t goin’ to have Skin over there 
grinnin’ at us that way, like he’d got ahead 
of us, so I said, 1 Come on, Cop,’ an’ then I 
laid down on my stomach an’ started. Gee — 
it was hard work for me — I’m not like Skin 
— used to twistin’ around like I was made of 
rubber. But I got acrost and so did Cop. It 
was easier for him than it was for me, but he 
was scared to death. His face was jes’ as 
white. We had to holler * Bully for you, Cop,’ 
all the time or he never would have got 
acrost. Then we stooped down an’ squeezed 
through the big hole. It turned out to be a 
reg’lar avenue — almost dark — like it was jes’ 
about supper time. It led us into a big cave 
— I tell you that was a find ! We jes’ danced 
around an’ whooped. It sounded holler. We 
agreed we wouldn’t tell another livin’ soul 
an’ we never have till now — and that’s ’cause 


294 A Little Princess of Tonopah 


we have to give it up. This is goin’ to be our 
last visit. They’re goin’ to begin blastin’ to- 
morrow, maybe. I got Skin an’ Cop to let 
you go — so it’s all right.” 

“ Tante Elsa is not here, so I can’t ask. 
But I’ll go anyway. Will I have to crawl on 
my stomach ? ” 

“ Um-hm — we always do — an’ that’s why I 
have on such old clothes ; we always wear the 
worst we’ve got. We’ve fixed the place so it’s 
easier to get acrost to the cave now — so’s we’ll 
not slide off ; but we always crawl. I don’t 
believe even Skin would dast try to walk.” 

“ You’ll have to wait until I change my 
dress then, Tubb}^ — for this one is new. I’ll 
put on the old gray dress I came to Tonopah 
in, it’s almost worn out, and Tante Elsa’s 
going to cut it up and put it into the new 
braided mat she’s making.” 

In a few minutes they were off. Jean felt 
very adventurous. 

“ We look as if we’d jumped out of the rag- 
bag, Tubby,” she remarked as they turned 


A Dangerous Adventure 295 

away. “ But that’s the way we ought to look 
when we are going on an adventure. What’s 
the name of your cave ? ” 

“ Nothin’ — -just the cave. We can’t never 
agree on the name, we try every time we’re 
up there. No use namin’ it now when we’ve 
got to give it up.” 

“ I can hardly wait to see it.” 

“ It’s a long way off yet — maybe you’ll get 
tired.” 

But Jean proved quite equal to the long 
climb and the crawl across to the cave. She 
bore the sundry scratches on her hands hero- 
ically and disdained the offer of the only 
clean handkerchief in the party, which Skin 
offered her to bind about the deepest scratch 
on her arm. She wiped the blood on her 
dress and regarded the stains with a curious 
satisfaction. 

“ I know now how it feels to be a bar- 
barian,” she said, drawing a long breath of 
satisfaction as she made a cross of blood on the 
back of her hand. 


296 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ Gee, you look like a warrior,” exclaimed 
Cop admiringly. 

When they crawled through the passage- 
way, and stood at the entrance of the cave, 
Tubby called a halt until he went inside and 
lighted the candles which were placed in 
sconces contrived out of tin cans at irregular 
intervals about the den. 

When Jean stepped in, she was quite over- 
come by the grandeur of the place. All 
kinds of posters decorated the walls. From 
the top of the cave hung a curious collection 
of pendants which Skin explained were 
trophies — each with a thrilling history. Jean 
found the flags suggestive, but she wondered 
what adventurous history could possibly 
hang about the ear of corn and the big 
soup ladle. In the corner near the entrance 
was a fireplace built of carefully laid stones. 

“ Where does the smoke go ? ” asked Jean 
as Tubby laid a small fire of corn-cobs and 
wood. 

“ Out the hole we came in. It gets kind 


A Dangerous Adventure 297 

of stuffy with smoke in here, but we never 
have much burnin’ at a time. It’s awful 
hard work bringing up wood to burn or 
anything else.” 

Jean was absorbed in the inspection of the 
bows and arrows and the tomahawks, when 
Skin gave a growl like an outraged bear. ’ 

“ Some one’s been in our cave,” he cried, 
waving a brown glove which he had dis- 
covered on the ground. • 

“ Why, it’s a woman’s ! ” exclaimed Jean, 
examining it. “ And not a very big woman’s 
either.” 

“ Pooh, it’s no woman’s, for she couldn’t 
ever get here. More’n likely it dropped out 
of some man’s pocket.” 

They all speculated excitedly about the 
glove for a while, but became tired of it very 
soon. 

“ It’s not got any blood on it,” said Tubby 
throwing it aside, “ an’ it’s not torn or chewed 
or anything — nothin’ exciting about it.” 

“ Now if it had jes’ had a piece of paper 


298 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

with a secret code in it,” mourned Skin, kick- 
ing it into the corner. 

They turned back to the weapons. 

“ Let's shoot,” suggested Jean, selecting the 
largest bow, decorated with glaring designs of 
skeletons. 

“ Here’s the target, off here in the farthest 
corner,” said Cop, venturing into the semi- 
darkness at the end of the cave and holding 
up a candle. 

“ Why, it looks like a hole by the side of 
it.” 

“ ’Tis,” answered Cop peering over his 
shoulder. “ It’s a place ’bout as big as a 
dry-goods box — ’tain’t good for anything but 
a storehouse. We’ve always been goin’ to 
use it for that but we’ve never had anything 
t’ store.” 

Jean began to shoot. 

“ These arrows are very dangerous looking,” 
she said admiringly. 

“ If they’d hit, they’d kill,” asserted Skin 
proudly. “ I made ’em. They have darnin’ 


A Dangerous Adventure 299 

needle points. Old Washoe Jim showed me 
how — an’ he made our tomahawks for us too 
— they ain’t no playthings.” 

Cop affixed the candle hurriedly beside the 
target and moved off. 

“ Pooh, I guess they wouldn’t more’n take 
the skin off,” scoffed Jean, adjusting another 
and taking more careful aim, as the first had 
gone wide of the target. 

“ You can’t shoot at all,” said Tubby watch- 
ing her. 

“ I just can,” answered Jean, on her mettle. 

She squinted her eye carefully, drew the 
string, and away whizzed her arrow. 

A chorus of derisive laughter went up, for 
the second arrow went winging into the dark 
hole, farther away from the target than the first. 

“ Sh — hush,” cried Skin suddenly laying a 
finger on his lips. “ What was that? ” 

The laughter stopped instantly. Cop drew 
nearer to Tubby. 

“ I didn’t hear anything,” 

Tubby. 


whispered 


300 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ Neither did I,” breathed Jean. 

“ I thought I did,” chattered Cop, huddling 
behind Tubby’s broad back. 

“It was like a little squeal — it was from 
the hole where your arrow went,” whispered 
Skin. 

They were all silent again, listening breath- 
lessly. 

“Somebody go and see,” pleaded Cop, as 
the suspense became intolerable. 

“ Maybe it’s a dragon,” said Jean out loud 
with startling daring. 

“ Or a brigand,” said Tubby with a fear- 
some suggestion in his voice. 

“ Humph,” ejaculated Skin, speaking very 
loudly. “ It sounded like a little pig.” 

Then there came another sound, muffled 
and indeterminate — but unmistakably a 
sound, from the hole. 

They looked at each other with widening 
eyes. 

“ I told you so,” said Skin. “ It’s in that 
hole.” 


A Dangerous Adventure 301 

“ Get a tomahawk and come on with me," 
cried Tubby seizing a tomahawk valiantly. 

“ Let me go too,” said Jean, grabbing the 
remaining weapon. 

Cop picked up a rock and followed the 
three reluctantly to the hole, which now ap- 
peared large enough to hold a menagerie of 
monsters. 

“ You hold the candle, Cop,” commanded 
Tubby. 

Cop threw down his rock and tremblingly 
took the candle. He knew what carrying the 
candle meant, and with the air of being pre- 
pared to die first, he allowed himself to be 
shoved to the front. 

“ Now make a rush,” said Skin. 

At the entrance they stopped short at the 
sound of a voice — a voice half choked with 
laughter. 

“ Oh, please don’t slay me, I’m not a 
dragon nor a brigand,” pleaded the voice. 

11 It’s a young lady-voice,” said Jean. 

“ Aw — I bet it’s a ventril’quist robber,” 


302 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

contended Tubby, loath to give up the idea 
of an encounter with a brigand. 

“ May I come out?” questioned the soft 
voice. 

Tubby took the candle and peered into the 
hole. When he saw that Jean was right, he 
dropped his tomahawk. 

“ Come on out,” he said, drawing back, so 
that the occupant of the hole could emerge. 

A young woman with a very flushed, dust- 
stained face, and an arrow tangled in her 
sleeve, came forth and stood before the as- 
tonished four. 

“ It was your glove,” declared Jean. 

“ How did you get here? ” questioned Skin, 
surveying the stranger critically. 

“ I crawled on my stomach,” answered the 
young woman laughingly, brushing her torn 
blouse. 

“ Who are you ? ” asked Tubby, in the tone 
of a house-owner to a burglar. “ I’ve never 
seen you before.” 

“ My name is Margaret Clinton,” said the 


A Dangerous Adventure 303 

usurper humbly. “ I didn’t know it was 
your cave — please forgive me. I was explor- 
ing and just happened to find it.” 

“ What did you hide for when we came ? ” 
asked Cop curiously. “ Were you scared 
of us ? ” 

The young woman’s eyes sparkled as she 
made her confession. 

“ I heard some of the things you said when 
you were coming in and I blew out my 
candle and hid — to listen. Then you almost 
shot me with your deadly arrow and that was 
what made me squeal ‘ like a little pig,’ when 
it went through my sleeve. I’m going to put 
you all in a book — you are delicious ! ” 

Jean came close and spoke in a tone 
of awe. 

“ Do you mean, do you mean what you 
say that you are going to put us in a book, 
that you are a literary lady ? Do you really 
write books ? ” 

Miss Clinton laughed heartily. 

“ Such is fame — three thousand miles from 


304 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

home! Yes, I must confess to the accusation 
— that is the way I amuse myself, writing 
books.” 

“ I don’t know as I want to be put in a 
book,” said Skin, edging nearer and looking 
at her askance. 

“ An’ I guess I’d bust your book covers,” 
added Tubby. “ You’d better not put me 
in.” 

“ What would it do to a feller, bein’ in a 
book ? ” queried Cop cautiously, before com- 
mitting himself. 

“ It might make you famous,” laughed 
Miss Clinton. 

“ You’d like that, Cop,” said Jean, “ and so 
would we all — let’s all let her put us in. I 
think it would be beautiful. Would we be 
dressed up every day ? ” 

Miss Clinton’s answer was drowned by a 
sudden distant rumble and crack which made 
the earth under their feet quiver and the 
walls of the cave shake. 

“ They’re blastin’ ! ” shouted Tubby. 


A Dangerous Adventure 305 

“ Come on — we must get right out. This is 
just a shell — it'll fall right in.” 

But as he spoke, before there was time to 
move from where they stood, there came 
another louder crash which sent the earth 
and the rocks flying down in great masses. 
Ail but one candle went out and there was an 
outcry of general confusion. 

There was a rush and a scramble for the 
opening, where Tubby marshalled them out. 
They were all there except one. 

“ Jean ! ” shrieked Tubby. 

There was no answer. 

Tubby found her lying unconscious, half 
buried by the falling earth and stone. 

Tubby carried Jean out of the cave — how 
he could never tell — and laid her on the 
ground before the others, who did not know 
until that moment that anything had hap- 
pened to her. 

She soon revived in the open air. Miss 
Clinton anxiously examined her to find out 
where she was hurt. Her head had luckily 


306 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

escaped injury. But her arm, which she had 
thrown up instinctively to protect herself, 
was broken by the falling stone, and her 
ankle was badly bruised. 

“ I’m all right,” said Jean faintly, shutting 
her teeth to keep from crying out with the 
pain. 

Miss Clinton helped Tubby tie all the coats 
securely together and improvised a stretcher. 
Then Tubby and Skin carried her across the 
dangerous ledge. It was the first time they 
had ever gone across it standing. It was 
only for Jean that they felt afraid. 

“ I’d a tried it walkin’ on my hands for 
her, if it would’ve done any good,” declared 
Skin afterward. 

•With broken, careful steps, the four carried 
Jean down the mountain and brought her 
home from her adventure to Tante Elsa in 
the little shop. 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE LITERARY LADY 

Jean’s convalescence was “ bright as a 
patchwork quilt,” she declared to “ The 
Literary Lady,” who added much of the gay- 
est color. 

“ If it wasn’t for seeing the spring flowers 
out on the desert, I’d be almost sorry to get 
well,” she said, looking about at the treasures 
which had accumulated so rapidly during her 
sickness. 

Chief of her new treasures were The 
Literary Lady’s own books. 

“ Father Dick says they are too grown-up 
for me yet — but I think they are very easy to 
understand. I like the one about the college 
girl. Some day I am going to be one ; — and 
I’d like to be a literary lady too. What do 
you do to be one ? ” 

“ You just grow into one,” answered Miss 

307 


308 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

Clinton, “ and I shouldn’t be one bit surprised 
if you would.” 

Jean repeated this remark to The Gold 
Eagle Man. 

“ So maybe after all I’ll get what I want 
more than anything else,” she said. 

“ Was that what you meant that first time I 
ever saw you when you said money couldn’t 
buy what you wanted — that it was something 
you’d have to work for all by yourself? ” 

“ Yes, that was it,” Jean nodded. “ And I 
want to be a literary lady just exactly like Miss 
Clinton. She is The Rainbow Lady’s friend 
— they went to college together. She has 
come to get material for a new book, she says. 
Father Dick says that her last book was one 
of the best sellers, which means everybody 
reads it. I think she is the very nicest kind 
of a literary lady.” 

“ I’ve met your Literary Lady myself,” said 
The Gold Eagle Man dryly. “ Out on the 

desert, ridin’ — like you, only she wasn’t 

* 

scared or lost. She was fixin’ her saddle and, 


The Literary Lady 309 

natural enough, I stopped to help her. Then 
we got to talkin’ as we rode along. Pretty 
soon an auto whizzed by an’ she looked after 
it and said, ‘ A modern mining camp with its 
automobiles, its electric lights and telephones 
would be a revelation to Bret Harte, wouldn’t 
it ? Do you like his work ? ’ 

“ Then I did a foolish thing. It’s not in me 
to pretend, but I didn’t have sense enough 
not to try. * I think some of his work is very 
coarse,’ I said, thinkin’ from the first part of 
her remark that he must be some one pretty 
much behind the times. ‘ Oh, do you ? ’ she 
said, just like that. ‘ Why, we worship Bret 
Harte at home in Boston ! ’ Then I knew the 
gentleman must have some way stumbled 

onto a mighty big pile. * Maybe in Boston it 

♦ 

don’t matter how a man gets at a thing,’ I 
said, after a minute. ‘ Oh, yes it does,’ she 
said. * But surely you think Bret Harte’s 
work shows true skill ? It seems to me that 
he has complete mastery of his material. I’ve 
read everything he’s written a dozen times 


310 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

over.’ Then I was disgusted with myself. 
But thinkin’ over my remarks, I couldn’t see 
but what the things I’d said wouldn’t do for 
a writin’ man as well as any other, so I just 
said, real stubborn, ‘ Well, I’ll take the news- 
paper every time.’ She looked surprised, then 
like she understood all of a sudden. ‘ I sup- 
pose his characters do seem unreal to you 
modern mining men. His people aren’t much 
like the ones here, are they ? ’ she said. 

“ 1 Here they’re mostly college men that do 
things,’ I answered dodgin’, but true to fact, 
‘ with a few mixed in like me that ain’t.’ 
She looked at me a minute, with her eyes half 
closed like she was makin’ a camera out of 
’em an’ gettin’ a picture back in her head. 

‘ You certainly are a unique type,’ she said. 

“ Now how could a fellow be sure what she 
meant by that? It sounded fair enough, but 
I didn’t have any answer ready for her, so I 
says very sudden, 1 Your cinch needs tightenin’ 
again.’ Then I made some offhand remarks 
about the desert and she kept drawin’ me out 


3 11 


The Literary Lady 

to talk about the things I thought about the 
desert an* the mountains — you know there’s a 
lot to both which some people never get — an’ 
I told her a few of the things I’d learned. I 
guess I’d been a-talkin’ yet, only after one of 
my remarks she said, 1 Say that again,’ an’ 
shut her eyes — this time just like she was 
puttin’ some shorthand down in a corner of 
her brain. 

“ Somehow that shut me up like a clam — 
an’ she didn’t get nothin’ more out of me. 
I’ve seen her since a few times. Your Rain- 
bow Lady’s been invitin’ me up to her house 
to talk to the lady — to * tell her about the real 
pioneer days,’ she says. But I’ve not gone 
much. Somehow I don’t feel just right in 
that house. Their chairs may be all right, 
but I don’t feel comfortable sittin’ in ’em. 
Every time I knocked the ashes from Bron- 
son’s cigars,, which the}^ insisted upon my 
smokin’, the grinnin’ faces on that ash tray 
seemed to be havin’ their fun at me. Then 
when I tried it without lookin’ I’d knock the 

% 


312 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

ashes all over the shiny table. The tea they 
gave me to drink in baby cups worried me 
too. I couldn’t play I was a bird, takiiT a 
drop at a time on my bill — an’ I always took 
the whole thing at one swallow — or two at 
the most, then I got way ahead of the rest and 
had to take more, when I didn’t want it, so’s 
to come out even.” 

Jean’s eyes laughed all through The 
Gold Eagle Man’s narrative and when he 
finished she sat up and clapped her hands. 

“ Oh, I just know The Literary Lady is 
going to put you into a story or a book ! ” 
she said, at which The Gold Eagle Man threw 
up his hands in horror. 

Some time later The Gold Eagle Man came 
in and threw a freshly cut magazine in Jean’s 
lap, already full of a dozen things. 

“ Take a look at that. What do you think ? 
Your Literary Lady has tried to put the 
desert and the sage-brush and the alkali dust 
and the mountains and some of the people 
of this place inside the pages of this maga- 


The Literary Lady 313 

zine. And she’s put me into her story as 
kind of leadin’ clown. Oh, it’s me — there’s 
no mistakin’ the picture. How do you think 
a fellow feels to see himself like that in black 
and white, with everything he ever said 
right down there plain for him to see what 
a fool he’s made of himself. It’s like mega- 
phonin’ a sell to the whole world. It struck 
• me right away that it was a regular Washoe 
Indian trick.” 

He took the magazine from Jean’s hands and 
started to throw it on the fire. 

Jean cried out in protest. 

“ Why, I think she meant it for a compli- 
ment.” 

The Gold Eagle Man paused thoughtfully. 

“ Maybe now she did. What do you 
think ? I can see lookin’ at it one way, that 
she might have meant it for a right nice 
compliment. One minute it looks one way 
to me, and the next, the other way that I 
don’t like. It don’t seem — rememberin’ her 
face — it don’t seem like she could be any 


314 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

kind of a grafter — but it does look a little 
like she got the drop on me, now doesn’t it? 
And a little thing like her, too.” 

“ Please don’t burn it up,” pleaded Jean. 
“ If she’d ever put me in a book I’d appre- 
ciate it. Why, I’d put the book in a gold 
colored satin cover.” 

When Jean had had her last “ convales- 
cence party,” — at which The Rainbow Lady 
took the prize in the nursery rhyme match — 
The Literary Lady persuaded Father Dick 
to let her take Jean to California with her 
for a while. 

So Jean’s trunk was packed and she was 
whirled all in a day and a night from the 
desert to the wonderful flowering beauty of 
California. Her letters to Tonopah were all 
exclamation points over the glass-bottomed 
boats at Catalina Island, the orange-groves, 
the roses, the pink and blue hydrangeas, the 
wonderful, wonderful trees, the “ beautiful 
tourist people,” the curio-shops — and most of 


The Literary Lady 315 

all, the ocean. “ When I have my kingdom, 
as a princess should, I am going to have it 
by the sea like the tumbler man,” she wrote 
to her father. 


CHAPTER XXII 

THE WISH COMES TRUE 

Jean came back to Tonopah with the feel- 
ing that it was “the nicest place on earth. ” 

“ California is beautiful — and it has 

flowers,” she said to The Literary Lady as 
their train pulled into Tonopah. “ But 
Tonopah is beautifuller 'cause it’s home.” 
Every one was at the station to meet Jean — 
Father Dick and all her friends. Such a 
greeting as Jean received ! 

Underneath the laughter and the gay 
questionings there was a repressed excite- 
ment. Every one seemed wanting to tell 
something. Tubby was bubbling over with 
the secret, and The Gold Eagle Man had to 
suppress him every few moments. Skin did 

a cake-walk to give vent to his feelings as 

316 


The Wish Comes True 317 

they all stood talking. Father Dick himself 
looked so happy that Jean knew something 
wonderful had happened. 

“ What is it ? ” she asked. 

“ What's what? ” parried her father. 

“ The something underneath ? ” 

The Rainbow Lady jumped up and down 
and Skin turned a handspring. 

“ Oh, let’s tell ! ” she cried. 

But Jean’s father shook his head. 

“ Not yet.” 

So, consumed with curiosity, Jean was 
forced to wait until he chose to tell. She, 
too, had a secret which made her eager to 
get home. While she had been in California 
she had finished earning the fifty dollars. 
The Literary Lady had taken her to stay for 
a time with some friends who lived upon a 
big fruit ranch. Here she had helped pick 
the fruit and earned money when she felt as 
if she were only playing. 

When all the visitors except The Gold 
Eagle Man had gone from the little shop Jean 


318 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

whispered something to Xante Elsa and Onkel 
Max, then she solemnly laid five gold pieces 
in her father’s hand. 

“There, Father Dick,” she said proudly. 
“ There is what I’ve made to help earn the 
living.” 

Father Dick gave an exclamation that was 
half a sob, and caught her up in his arms. 

“ Jean — oh, Jean ! ” he cried. “ Now I’ll 
tell you my secret. We’re rich, Jean ! So 
rich you need never think of helping to earn 
the living any more — so rich you can have 
anything in the world you want as soon as 
we dig the gold out of my mine.” 

Jean could not speak for wonder. She 
lifted her hand with the little worn grass 
ring upon it and looked at it solemnly. 
Then she lifted the ring to her lips and 
kissed it. 

“ Oh, Father Dick, my grass-ring wish 
has come true ! ” she said in awe. “ I knew 
it would.” 

Then her father told her of his prospect- 


The Wish Comes True 319 

ing trip, which he had not written anything 
about, and of his “ strike ” almost the first 
thing. 

“ It sounds like a wonder-tale out of your 
book with the brass hinges on,” she said. 
“ And it’s because I didn’t forget once to 
turn my ring and say my wish for you every 
morning ! ” 

Jean wrote at once very excitedly to Grace 
Collins about their sudden good fortune. 

“ I’ll keep the grass ring you made for me 
forever and ever — until it crumbles into dust 
— because my wish has come true. Father 
Dick has found his gold mine. I wish I had 
a purry word to say how being rich makes me 
feel. It is very nice. All my friends are so 
glad for me — I don’t know which is the 
gladdest. Giacino says he would go to Italy 
if he were I. He is getting rich too, but not 
so fast as if he had a gold mine instead of a 
fruit market, which he has now instead of 
working in the mine. He thinks the Eng- 
lish language is beautiful and can say almost 


320 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

everything now except ‘ecstatic.’ Father 

Ambrose wants to know what the Princess 

of Tonopah is going to do now that she 

has a real gold wand to wave, and I say 

whatever the fairies whisper. The Rainbow 

Lady and The Literary Lady gave me a 

* 

beautiful tea ‘ in honor of the event/ they 
said. We had frosted cakes with candied 

f 

rose-leaves on. 

“ Aurelia can only hug me — she is so glad 
she just can’t find a word, she says, and 
Beatrice is sweet to me inside her house now 
just like she is on the sand-pile. Tubby and 
Skin and Cop wanted me to send telegrams 
to all my friends in Payneville and they say 
they are sorry just for one thing — because I’ll 
not sell them any more fudge. But I tell 
them I’ll make it anyhow for them. Onkel 
Max and Tante Elsa cried, they were so 
happy and The Gold Eagle Man says he is 
like Aurelia, he can’t find a word. 

“ The loveliest shiningest thing about it all 
is that The Man of Mystery’s son is Father 


The Wish Comes True 321 

Dick’s partner. The Gold Eagle Man was 
mistaken about him, and I was right. He 
has worked and worked and Father Dick took 
him with him on his prospecting trip because 
he trusted him too. So part of the mine is his. 
And very soon he will be going home to the 
Big Yellow House to his father. You must 
never, never tell until he comes. 

“There are flowers now on the desert — sand- 
lilies that smell so sweet and lie flat against 
the earth and Indian paint-brush, which is 
red and shows a long way off, and some little 
orange cup-shaped flowers which nobody 
knows the name of, and cactus with wonder- 
ful pink blooms. The Gold Eagle Man got 
some cactus for me one day, but it stuck him 
till he dropped it. 

“We are going to have a house. Some 
time when it gets too very hot to go outdoors 
here, as it does sometimes in summer, I am 
coming back to Payneville for a visit. But I 
can’t stay long — because there is so much to 
do here at home.” 


322 A Little Princess of Tonopah 

“ What do you want to buy first, Jean ? ” 
asked Father Dick. 

“ I want a princess dress,” laughed Jean 
promptly, “ the color of my mountains.” 

“ Little Vanity ! ” laughed Father Dick. 
“ And then ? ” 

“ And then, I want a very fat purse, so I 
can be an angel of service.” 

Jean gave a happy laugh and flashed a look 
at The Gold Eagle Man, the joy of a dream 
come true nestling in her eyes. 










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w/' 

> *^Va* ^ „* .^sb'*, v .*<- 




' rfCr# A 




